As Wolf Alice approach the release of their fourth full-length album, The Clearing, band members Ellie Rowsell, Joff Oddie, Joel Amey, and Theo Ellis have been doing lots of press interviews mixed in with an assortment of live performances ranging in size from a powerful Glastonbury set last month to playing a small stage in the back of Toronto’s Dine Alone Records storefront to a crowd of less than 100 people. Showcasing and road-testing the new material along with deep cuts and classic tracks, Wolf Alice played twice in Toronto in July; the aforementioned Dine Alone show and then the next day at Edge 102.1’s Sugar Beach, doing a seven-song set in front of a few hundred people at 5 pm. The band played “Thorns” and “The Sofa” acoustically in Toronto, and blew fans’ minds at Sugar Beach by playing “White Leather” (a 2013 b-side that doesn’t get performed very often) acoustically.

The band has been playing small shows at venues where they have been doing press for the past month. Clubs that hold 200-300 people in the UK, Los Angeles, and then these promo shows in Toronto, before heading to New York. And conducting numerous interviews. One of these interviews was in-person with V13 at the Sony Canada offices in Liberty Village, Toronto.

Wolf Alice’s debut album, My Love Is Cool, resonated with fans of indie music, both young and old, touching on genres like dream pop and shoegaze with some ingredients that are uniquely their own. Over their subsequent two albums, Wolf Alice have honed their songcraft to a sharper point, leading them to the soon-to-be-released The Clearing, featuring their most ambitious recordings to date. The Clearing is an album with a self-imposed mandate to preserve everything great about the band, while giving all the songs and instruments more room to breathe. The eleven songs included on the album sound modern, retrospective, and timeless. The band has managed to release an instantly classic-sounding album as they embark on their new musical journey with Columbia Records.

A month after the album’s release, Wolf Alice will return to Toronto for an already sold-out show at History on September 23rd.

Can you describe what this time is like? The weeks leading up to the release of an album that is still very personal to you, and it’s going to just go out into the world and become everybody else’s item?

Joff Oddie: “It’s quite a frenetic time. There’s definitely lots going on, lots in the schedule. We’re really excited. We love the album. We really want people to hear it, so I’m personally really excited. I don’t feel nervous. I’m not nervous because I like it so much myself. But how do you feel, Joel?”

Joel Amey: “Well, I haven’t had enough time to get nervous. Sony is keeping us very busy, which is amazing. The support has been amazing, and we’ve hit the ground running in a few areas where we’ve been over the years, and perhaps hadn’t had as many people to speak to, so it’s been really great. The reactions from people may be similar to yours. Have you heard the record already?”

I have. I love it.

Joel: “Yeah. It’s been amazing seeing people’s reactions, and now we’re just waiting for everyone else to hear it.”

I got into your band because I love dream-pop. When I play the new album, I don’t hear the dream-pop, but I still love the album.

Joff: “Oh, that’s good.”

I hope everybody else feels the same way when they hear it. Can you talk a little bit about being in Canada? When you travel to different countries, you must have some memory or experience that happened while you were playing, unwinding, or doing something else. When you come to this city, what do you think of?

Theo Ellis: “We had an amazing moment, I think maybe the first time we went to Canada, where we drove past the Niagara Falls, and they were completely frozen over, and we were playing “Waterfalls,” the Paul McCartney song, and that was amazing to see a frozen Niagara Falls. That’s not really that much to do with the city or anything, but that memory is a fond one for me. I remember being outside a bucking bronco bar one night and eating poutine for the first time. That’s my other memory, and I was like, “I don’t know if I like Poutine.”

Ellie Rowsell: “In Toronto particularly I feel like the crowd really got behind us. Our shows here have gone so well for us, and we’re very grateful. We love coming back because of that. And yes, we played at that beautiful theatre the last time we were here. I can’t remember what it’s called now, but it’s really cool. Yeah, I love playing in Toronto.”

Joff: “Nice. I think I had one of my favourite days off in ages here a couple of days ago, and went off on the island and hung out and went swimming. It’s so beautiful. Such a pretty city. I really like it.”

Lovely. There was a show I saw here; I think you were opening for The 1975.

Joff: “Oh wow. That was a while ago.”

And you (points to Joel) were flown home because you were going to become a dad.

Joel: “I was replaced. I didn’t have the easiest time getting home either. I’d lost my passport on Theo’s birthday. So Freddy (Sheed), who was already filling in for George in 1975, also filled in for me. Which was great.”

Ellie: “He also played with The Japanese House. That’s why he was there.”

Joff: “Yes, he played three gigs that night.”

Joel: “Yeah. Incredible. Thank you, Freddy.”

Good show.

Joel: “Thank you. (laughter)”

Joff: “Better than normal.”

Joff: “That was the one.”

When I played The Clearing for the first time, I listened to it all the way through, and it felt to me like something that had been transported back in time, 45 or 50 years, from the seventies to right now. That can’t be an easy thing to do for a band; to put out something that sounds established and whole and realised like that; and I want to applaud you on that.

Joff: “Oh, thank you. That’s very kind.”

Joel: “Yeah, it’s really nice to hear. I think when we were writing it, we didn’t want it to sound like it was retro pastiche, but obviously it’s kind of like a love letter to that era with the sonics and the way we approached the songwriting, but we wanted it to sound like an album by a band today as well. So yeah, hearing what you just said was great.”

Did you have any songs for the new album written prior to switching over to Columbia Records?

Theo: “I think that there was, yeah, there was a couple, there are aspects of “Passenger Seat” that are really old.”

Joff: “Yeah, I think there may be a couple of things. I actually can’t remember when it all kicked off. We did a couple of sessions while we were still touring Blue Weekend.

Theo: “Yeah, at the end of Blue Weekend, we were trying to go in and out of studios to try and work on some stuff that I suppose was new and that probably came before we signed the record deal. Yeah, so there are always songs in the background, but when you’re touring, it’s so hard to sort something out when you’re away; you can’t concentrate necessarily. Or at least we’ve not managed to find the balance of in and out of the studio and touring at the same time. So everything got properly realized after we finished Blue Weekend’s tour cycle, which is the end of ’22. And then halfway through ’23, we started to get back together, and there had been songs that people had amassed on their own, and then we started to all work through those.”

What does a Wolf Alice demo sound like? What did “Bloom Baby Bloom” sound like before you bought it into the studio and polished it all up?

Ellie: “Crap. For me personally, doing demos – there are different ways. One is, you know that you’re going to get into a room with your bandmates, and so you don’t try; you just want to get down the main idea, really, and all the bits that you feel passionate about, and then just leave it. I think “Bloom Baby Bloom” was very much like that. I just used a drum loop or something, just quickly. I knew that we would all put in our parts, and I didn’t want to write them. So it doesn’t sound great; it has a very garage-band vibe to it, but it did the job of getting the idea out.”

Joel: “I remember hearing it for the first time, walking to the rehearsal space from where we were staying, and hearing the chorus, and I was like, “That chorus is huge.” Everything is! The lyrics, sentiment, the energy, it’s all there in your demo.”

Do you have that shorthand with all of your songs where you’ll just put something together and know you will fix it all up when you get together?

Ellie: “I think this time around, yeah, we really did that. Just knowing that, we played into each other’s strengths. A lot of the demos are there just so you wouldn’t forget the song, rather than working out the parts and stuff like that. Sometimes that’s really fun. And on other albums, we’ve got really excited about production ideas, and so the demos were maybe more intricate. But I feel like a lot of these ones were more just to remember the pathway.”

You may have answered this already, but I’d love to know: 12 years ago, how did Theo and Joel end up getting into the band? What did that process look like?

Ellie: “Oh my God. Let me think back.”

Joff: “I guess it was through our manager at the time, he was helping us out. We’ll start with Joel. We had a guy that I was friends with from school, he was playing drums for a while. Guy called James DC (“Hi James”), and Joel filled in for him after he broke his arm, because he was on my shoulders at a music festival and fell off my shoulders and broke his arm.”

Ellie: “What were you watching?”

Joff: “Was it Patti Smith?”

Joel: “We’ve said this before, but before we knew each other, I was also at that gig. And I was watching Patti Smith at that festival (jokes) and pushing at Joff (laughs) Isn’t that strange serendipity that I was at that show, not realising my life had changed completely.”

Joff: “So Joel usurped my friend.”

Theo: “And then I usurped Ellie’s friend.”

Joff: “Yeah, there was a friend of Ellie’s, a friend of all of ours, Sadie Cleary, who was playing the bass for a while, and she went off to go to nursing school, I think. Right? So, we were down a member, and Theo was filling in. We were also looking for a girl to replace Sadie, but we didn’t find anyone. So we got Theo.”

Theo: “It was just purely me being there. Nothing else.”

Joel: “Theo and I have known each other since we were teenagers, and we saw you guys play as fans.”

Joff: “But it did feel immediately right when we were all together, it was like, oh shit, this feels really good when these guys usurped our friends.”

How different is doing promo for this album compared to doing Blue Weekend, which came out sort of in the wake of the pandemic?

Joff: “Yeah, that was different. It was bizarre. We just spent days and weeks at home on Zoom.”

Theo: “It was crap.”

The pandemic? Or just doing the promo then?

Theo: “I mean, yeah, both. (laughs) No, no. Doing promo is fine because at least you have something to do. It was really difficult for people, and it was a strange energy exchange because so much of our life is made up of recording songs to then play live to see people react to that, and it’s a shared experience so much of the time. I think our Glastonbury performance recently, a lot of people have been like, “Wow, that’s so amazing.” And I think that was because of the crowd most of the time. Even though you are not playing live when you’re putting out an album all the time, it just felt so different.

“And I’m really noticing it when we’re going out promoting this album now, because it was, I feel like I’m having new experiences. But that’s probably because I’ve not put an album out at this scale since Visions Of A Life came out, and I was like 2016-2017 or whatever it was. It’s been really joyful to be honest. It’s been lovely to have proper conversations and to be in the same room as people. Even something like last night, which for bands sometimes, people don’t love doing stripped-back sessions or whatever. That was lovely. That was a real treat, and it was a different thing. So I feel really grateful that we are not still in a pandemic. Now that I’ve said that, a new virus will likely be released.”

50 years down the road.

Theo: “Yeah, ok, I’ll wait 50 years. I’ll be gone then. (laughter)”

Joff: “I thought the exact same thing as you. But I laughed at you.”

Will you play this entire album live in any way, shape, or form? There are always songs that don’t wind up on a set when you’re touring. Every song on this new album should be played live. I feel like you need to capture this in some way and turn it into something.

Joel: “I think in some form we’ll probably play the songs, all of them hopefully.”

Ellie: “You know, I used to think it would be quite cool to play an album top to bottom. But now I’m like, I feel like when I go to shows, especially of artists that I like but I don’t know that well, especially if you found them on their current album, one of the great things about going to these shows is you’ll discover their old music and stuff. I feel like that’s important when you play your songs. Especially when you’ve got a lot of albums from before. But you curate your live show; you take things that complement each other or deep cuts to make it fresh for you. I don’t want to watch one album anymore.”

Joff: “We actually did that.”

Theo: “Yeah, it was crap.”

Joff: “It was a Blue Weekend show.”

Joel: “We did it once. We were like (to the crowd), “ok, sorry.”

That’s pretty funny. Did you put any different pressures on yourself as artists because you were jumping onto a major label? Or did you just walk right into it and do what you do best?

Theo: “It’s probably subconscious pressure that I’m not sure how it manifests itself. Still, in terms of when we started making the music, the pressures from our inter band relationship where we want to do something that challenges us creatively probably keeps the band fresh because to do the same thing over and over again is not that appealing to us, I don’t think. And then, yeah, we did have this new pressure, which was to kind of not throw every single thing we possibly could into the recording and leave space for the songs and make sure that all of the parts were really doing their own thing. That was a bit of a pressure and a challenge that we had. But I don’t think we felt the pressure of “we’re now part of some big company.”

Joff: “We weren’t going, “We need to write the pop bangers now.” You know what I mean? I think that wasn’t a conversation that we had. It was always making it about what we want to do, trying to please ourselves. And that’s the kind of litmus test I think all of us have. If you put all of our tastes together, I think it’s pretty broad, between all of us, and the basis that we cover as listeners. So I think if all four of us are like, oh, “I really like this.” I think that’s a pretty good way; that’s always been the test. I think that’s partially why.”

What were you hoping Greg Kurstin would bring to this album, and did he deliver the goods?

Joff: “He delivered everything, didn’t he?”

Joel: “I hoped he would help us realize what we were hearing in our heads. Because we had an idea. And I think even early on when we were playing it to people very close to us, they were like, “okay, I kind of get it.” But he really got it. And Greg has to be the conduit for that idea of the band. Unless you’re asking him to come in and just write everything for you, which we weren’t. He has to be able to listen to the way we’re describing things, which isn’t always very easy, and get it onto the computer or onto tracks, whatever. And I think he did deliver that.”

Joff: “Yeah, I think you maybe have an idea, some people do maybe have a super producer doing the work; you can hire them to do the work for you. However, we hired him to enable us to do it, and that’s what he did, and that’s what he’s so good at. Because he could have just done it for us. He is so fucking brilliant at everything. But he really made it his M.O. to kind of go, how do I get the most out of these people to make their record for them and not going, “this is my record and it’s going to sound like this.” Which is why he’s such a special dude.”

Can you talk a little bit about how you personally listen to music? Do you play physical media? Do you stream everything? Do you sit in a room and zone in on the actual album and play it right through?

Theo: “Depends what context you’re in, isn’t it? We’re travelling so much at the moment, so I don’t know if anyone’s got a record player with them? (laughs)”

Ellie: “I feel like when I listen to new music, I’ll listen to an album top to bottom, but actually, if someone releases a new album, I’ll be like, right, I’ll read the comments and then listen to it from top to bottom. But with my older music, I playlist them. I don’t often listen to a lot of old stuff, or to older albums. I’m really just adjusting to it. I’m not sure. But I love playlists and yeah, I feel like I’m more like a song person than an album person maybe. I don’t know. But I love the album obviously. Definitely. I love seeing how new people are treating an album now. But yeah, I do love it.”

Joel: “I’ve only had a vinyl player for four years, I’m quite late, maybe. So, the physical listening to things is actually just when you have a brief time at home; otherwise, yeah, it just follows or someone recommends something. So I’ll just listen to that one recommendation, and maybe that will give me an album to stream or something. I still really like hearing what people introduce me to things, and I prefer, yeah, I think all of you guys show me really interesting stuff more than maybe my algorithm does at times.”

Theo: “My algorithm’s slapping at the moment.”

Joel: “Oh really? Right. So Theo’s algorithm tells me what to listen to.”

Joff: “I love throwing a new album on and going for a run. I think that’s a really interesting way. I really like listening to music when I’m running and trying to clear the head space. But sticking on a vinyl is still a really special thing.”

Joel: “Yeah, it really is. It’s an experience, isn’t it?”

Joff: “Not having the flick switch. It’s an experience. Not having the skip button anywhere near.”

Joel: “I don’t know how to skip on the vinyl. So I have to listen. I’m sure certain people know how to do it, but I don’t know how to do it.”

Ellie: “I do love people who (I don’t really know, but who I’m thinking of one person here) will invite people around and say “let’s listen to some vinyls.” That’s such a nice idea. Everyone pick a song and listen.”

I feel like you’re committing more to playing a record.

Ellie: “It is that.”

It’s a conscious thing.

Ellie: “Yeah, you listen to it in a different way.”

Joff: “There’s something romantic about the crackle and stuff like that.”

I’m curious to see how that Blood Records pressing of The Clearing with the flowers in it looks like, and how that sounds.

Joff: “They’re real flowers as well.”

It looks brilliant.

Joel: “They do some amazing things; really cool stuff if you to go back and have a look what they’ve done.”

I think your last one, they did a lenticular on it. You could look at it and the image was all…

Joel: “It changes up or whatever”

Theo: “My mom’s got that one. She shows it to me every time I go back.”

Ellie: “What’s that one called?”

Lenticular.

Theo: “I can’t remember that one either. I call it a hologram, but that’s completely not what it is.”

A hologram is similar though. It’s adding a dimension to something that’s fixed. How do you feel about social media and the connection that you can have with your fans, and that they can have with you? I feel like there’s no barriers anymore.

Theo: “Yeah. I think that’s interesting that you frame it like that. There’s no barriers; because that is probably where the positive and negative is with that. You know what I mean? People need more protection. Because people can literally say anything to you all the time, which is kind of crazy and very invasive. But it’s also amazing. I’ve listened to someone talking about it, because I think things like TikTok get quite a negative connotation from an older generation, and they’re essentially just entertainment platforms. Do you know what I mean? Most of these things are not really treated like that. They’re treated like completely different things, but you have so many different formats that exist on all of them and different kinds of ways that people use them that they can be creatively amazing. People are doing such amazing stuff with very little, you can really excel on some of those things. But yeah, the fact that there’s not that many kinds of barriers between people or anything, and the fact that there’s anonymity involved, usually means that men sit there and say weird shit. And it’s such a bad exemplification of how I think human males usually are; I’m not saying that all males default to being behind the curtain. It can be this weird version of themselves. And I think can be terrible, but it can also be amazing. It could be an amazing vessel to spread your heart. So it’s just a massive catch 22 basically that needs better regulated, I think.”

On that topic, I polled some of your fans in the Wolf Alice Facebook group. Can I read you a couple of their questions?

All: “Yeah!”

Joff: “Like “What’s your problem?” (laughter)”

Ken would like to know when your rock opera is going to come out.

Joel: “Yes. So do I. That’d be so much fun.”

Theo: “I’ve been telling Ellie she needs to write a musical.”

Ellie: “Yeah. I feel like we’d do a good rock opera.”

Joel: “Maybe. I feel like it’s the natural progression of things.”

Theo: “Don’t ever say natural progression (laughs). “What’s the natural progression for rock? Opera!”

Joel: “Rock opera.”

Joff: “Yeah, yeah. Let’s do it.”

Theo: “Alright. Tomorrow.”

Bradley is interested in knowing how you’re going to use the Neural Quad Cortex in your stage setup?

Theo: “Oh, what is that? The amp?”

Joel: “Bradley, Bradley, Bradley.”

Joff: “They’re the digital amps that we’re playing with at the moment. We’re working with a fabulous guitar tech at the moment called Shingo and we are playing around with some new stuff, some digital-ampy things. They’re cool. They do a thing; an amp always does a thing. We are just kind of working it out. It’s always an evolution, and it’s kind of boring answer. So we are fiddling with them and seeing how they fit in the setup at the moment. They’re powerful. They can do a hell of a lot. They’re really impressive, I have to say.”

Paul would like to know where you got your new guitars from?

Joff: “I got a Heritage. An H157 from Heritage. It was black and I stripped all the paint work off, reshaped the neck and refinished it and put some new stuff inside of it. That’s the kind of less poorly shaped one. I don’t know… what else is new? Oh, there’s a Washburn acoustic that’s really nice. It’s like a 1970s D-28 copy. It’s like a Lawsuit Era guitar. That’s really nice. There’s an Eastman acoustic that they gave me. I love Eastman. They’re a great company. (To Theo) You’ve got a really iconic Gretsch.”

Theo: “A Gretsch.”

Joff: “That is an old Super Chet, I think, isn’t it? I don’t remember the name. You bought that at Hank’s Music on Denmark Street, which is a great shop.”

Theo: “It’s a really good shop.”

Ellie: “Thanks, Hank.”

Richard would like to know how Joel always plays with a traditional stick grip as opposed to matched.

Joel: “Actually, I don’t. I asked somebody that I knew was playing like that. I said, “How do you do that? I don’t think I can do that.” And then they said, “Have you ever tried?” And I went, “No.” And then I tried, and I could kind of do it, and I’ve just been doing it since, which is the answer for that. People ask me about that, and I don’t know why. I honestly did it for vanity at the beginning. I just thought it looked cooler, and when we used to play more unconventional and stuff, I was like, it just fitted a bit more and it has just stayed with me.”

And lastly, Ruby would like to know if you would ever consider doing surprise songs when you’re touring. So mixing up your set list by rehearsing a few tracks and then just shuffling them around at different dates.

Theo: “Yeah. Interesting. We’d love to do that.”

Ellie: “Yeah, I mean that’s always the dream, but I feel like it’s really hard. We don’t have a lot of time to rehearse, and sometimes you want to. I feel like it’s really nerve-wracking playing a new thing. You want to know that you’re rehearsed, and we’ve got a lot of songs now, and I often feel like, “Can you play this?” It’s like, I can’t do things like that. I just know how to play certain stuff. You need to rehearse, and we sometimes don’t have time, but the dream is to learn everything, so you can do that switch-up for your audience and switch-up for ourselves as well. I definitely would love to do that, but I hope people know that that’s really hard.”

Joff: “We do take pride in making a set that really works. It is something that’s played from one end to the other. Do you know what I mean? We really do work hard to make that flow right, so it’s not just a bunch of songs just randomly written down. There’s real effort. I liked ‘surprise songs’ though. It made me feel like it was going to be asking us to do like a flash mob or something like that. Anyway, maybe we could do a musical flash mob; musical; or opera.”