In the face of adversity and unprecedented change, the band we turn to are finally back.
London based four-piece Wolf Alice are finally back with new single ‘The Last Man on Earth’. This is the band’s first music in almost four years, following their mercury prize-winning sophomore album ‘Visions of Life’.
After such a long absence from the spotlight, many will ponder as to whether or not we’re getting the same Wolf Alice that we’ve come to know and the love. The abrasive thrashings of distorted guitar, paired with singer Ellie Roswell’s beautifully haunting vocals – there’s was a sound that many associate with happier, simpler times. But the band have returned to visit a world that not them nor their music could ever have imagined.
Emerging with a carefully-typed candid email, beginning with “It’s been a while, 4 years in fact”. It felt like a rescue mission, burrowing through the darkness to come and save us. It’s not the duty of a band to guide us out of the dark, and yet they always seem to do it anyway. As such, ‘The Last Man on Earth’ is the band’s most bold and ambitious song to-date. With a world substantially more fragile than the one they left, removed are the pervading waves of distortion and raw driving bass-line. All that remains is Roswell and a delicate piano, soon accompanied by swells of strings that linger from a distance. Instrumental breaks eventually shepherd us to an almighty climax which absorbs the room, with every corner swamped in instrumental grandeur.
Although it lives outside the mould that the band have assumed over the years, the discomfort of doing so reveals a harrowing yet sensual moment, possessed by a fated quality that seems to exist above the song itself. The accompanying video presents a vignette of Roswell bashfully singing, adjusting to the new world and the new Wolf Alice.
Watch/listen to ‘The Last Man On Earth’ here:
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