ALBUM: Wolf Alice 'My Love Is Cool'

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Long-awaited and feverishly anticipated, Wolf Alice’s debut album, My Love Is Cool, comes with lofty expectations. Fittingly, then, it’s a record that reaches for the stratosphere, with the combustion of Ellie’s soft touching whispers and the screaming of her angst filled mind the debut doesn’t surprisingly make for a beautiful start for a band that will go so far. The ambitions of Ellie Rowsell (guitar/vocals), Theo Ellis (bass), Joff Oddie (guitars) and Joel Amey (drums/vocals) are fully realised in stunning widescreen, and we now know what the band are, and have become.

My Love Is Cool is produced by Mike Crossey of Dirty Hit Records; the band went into the studio with a sense of panic last November for five weeks in London’s Wood Green. Producing an album which is stunningly fitting, with the heavy gigantic riffs of ‘Giant Peach’ and ‘You’re A Germ’ and the stunningly beautiful lustful twinkles of ‘Swallowtail’ and ‘Turn To Dust’. My Love is Cool is for the music lovers, period.

Previously known tracks ‘Fluffy’ and ‘Bros’ have been transformed into something that casts your breath aside. The heavier riffs make us see the different side of Wolf Alice, they both capture the energetic band in their highest peak and it certainly sets aside them from any other band around right now. The new reprised version of ‘Fluffy’ includes a new chorus, which features spoken word from Joff.

The intro to ‘Your Love’s A Whore’ is similar to that of a Foo Fighters, which shows that Wolf Alice are starting early with their classic rock which will last long, period. The pauses in the track are going to be perfect to hear live – the almost stop of the heartbeat of Wolf Alice is something that makes us hold our breath; breathe, the album is fantastic.

‘Giant Peach’ is the single that collected the fans into a frenzy of worship for the band, the perfect angst-filled anthem that resonates when they play live, or even in your bedroom. Ellie sings, “But God knows it’s hard to grieve when it’s hard to give a…”; the implied angst can’t whittle away from the ruckus that is created by the climax of the track, the screaming of Ellie and the heavy drum beat and guitar drags you away to another place.

The ultimate dirty unwashed anthem of ‘You’re A Germ’ is like a hauntingly beautiful children’s lullaby, the anecdotal song perhaps is full of the angst that is filled in almost every Wolf Alice track, especially ‘She’ and ‘Giant Peach’, which also inhibits the heavy bass-line and Ellie’s pure effervescence of a women that we all want to be. In a previous statement the band state: “You’re A Germ was the spark to some of our first mosh pits and holds a solid place in our hearts”.

As easy-going as the album does get, ‘Turns to Dust’ and ‘Soapy Water’, ‘Freazy’ effervescently fit in with the album, adding so much more to the band than we heard before. ‘Turns to Dust’ is the opening number for the substantial debut album, the guitar picking sounds relevant to the Asian Bollywood vibe and the almost wavy atmosphere is brought together by the stunning wistful lyrics and voice of Ellie Rowsell. ‘Soapy Water’ is equally as wistful as the latter; however there is something robotic about this track.

The ending track, ‘The Wonderwhy’, echoes of other tracks ringing out like a final reprise. For a band named after a literary reference, fiction is a conscious part of their manifestation. The track is simply stunning, with the excision of vocals, drums, bass and guitar everything is perfectly accurate. Ellie sings, “Don’t leave me here, when I’m not done,” and Ellie, it is sure to say that the fans are not going to leave you after this combustion of a debut album.

My Love Is Cool is released on June 22nd via Dirty Hit.