Wolf Alice are on fire. In the space of three years, the North Londoners have risen from the depths of obscurity, tail ending their whirlwind journey with a bold debut. They’re a difficult band to comfortably shoehorn into a genre label – My Love Is Cool veers between delicate indie and visceral, by-the-throat rock, and even that’s a generalisation. From the simmering melancholy of record opener ‘Turn to Dust’ to the untamed fury of ‘Giant Peach’, it’s a nerve wracking joyride that delivers on all the band’s promise, and then some.
“Forget our mothers and past lovers, forget everyone,” Ellie Rowsell sings on ‘Bros’, a feel-good testament to best-friendship summing up all of the freedom and naiveté of those growing years. My Love is Cool often touches on growing up, such as on the assertive ‘Giant Peach’ – a rousing beast of a song on which Ellie asks herself “what the hell keeps me here? / in this dark old town that I adore” as a colossal instrumental reaches breaking point. My Love is Cool’s heaviest moments are often spontaneous and explosive, as if shaking off the chains of youth.
‘Moaning Lisa Smile’, a blistering highlight of their previous Creature Songs EP and a staple of their live set, is surprisingly absent from Wolf Alice’s debut. Nevertheless, My Love is Cool isn’t lacking in volume – ‘You’re a Germ’ and one of their oldest songs ‘Fluffy’ retain the band’s loud, fearless sound. As ‘Fluffy’ b-side ‘White Leather’ once showed, the band do have a delicate side to tend to, flaunted on the catchy ‘Freazy’, with the line “you can hate us all you want but / it don’t mean nothing at all”.
It’s a line that neatly drops the pin on Wolf Alice as a band – they won’t be dictated by expectations or tropes, instead deciding just to do their own thing. My Love is Cool is a fitting testament to their outlook.
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