Generational British band Wolf Alice share new single, ‘The Sofa’ - another dimension to their highly anticipated fourth studio album The Clearing confirmed for release on August 22nd. Following a triumphant return to the stage with headlining festival performances at Primavera - where they unveiled ‘The Sofa’ for one of the first times, had thousands singing along - and a history-defining Glastonbury set on home soil, this new era announces Wolf Alice as a band who are in a league entirely of their own.
‘The Sofa’ is the album’s psychological portrait which is a microcosm of the wider themes it reckons with: falling in love with your life for exactly what it is and finally letting go of unrealised dreams without shame, guilt or disappointment as you grow older. Unspooling like a daydream on an idle afternoon, ‘The Sofa’ is a piano ballad fortified by the best songwriting of Ellie Rowsell’s career - radical in its unflinching honesty. “Didn’t make it out to California / Where I thought I might clean the slate / Feels a little like I’m stuck in Seven Sisters / North London, oh England / And maybe that’s ok,” Rowsell sings. In abandoning the self-consciousness which weighs down your twenties, Wolf Alice reach a point of hard-won serenity.
Rowsell shares: “It’s about not trying so hard to figure everything out, reflecting on getting older and trying not to agonise over things that have or haven’t happened in your life. It’s also about trying to get to grips with the polarising aspects of one’s life when you’re in a band. You’ve just played a huge tour - and you come home, and you have your dinner on the sofa. For me, it’s summed up in how I treat TV. I used to never watch the same thing twice because I thought I’ve got so much to discover! And now I’m like, It's okay if I just want to rewatch Peep Show for the thirteenth time.”
Shot on the streets of the band's native North London in homage to the lyrics, the video for The Sofa captures the day-dreamy spirit of the song in boldly-coloured slow motion. Ellie is transported on a surreal fantasy through the euphoric messiness of British summertime street life while never leaving the comfort of her sofa. Inspired by classic street photography, these vignettes capture the blissed out interactions of people from all walks of life, celebrating the shared joy we feel with strangers on a sunny day. The video was directed by Fiona Jane Burgess (Christina Aguilera, girlinred, Gucci) and features numerous easter eggs for the band's up-coming album.
The single release follows Wolf Alice’s victorious return to Glastonbury Festival this past month, performing a razor sharp set of hits to a sunset crowd on the Other Stage on Sunday afternoon. Combining fan favourites such as ‘Bros’ and ‘Don’t Delete The Kisses’ with jubilant new singles ‘Bloom Baby Bloom’ and ‘The Sofa’ - the slot felt like a victory lap for a band truly at the peak of their powers.
‘The Sofa’ follows on from the album’s forerunner, ‘Bloom Baby Bloom’. A fiercely powerful and fervent introduction to The Clearing, it’s an arresting ode to growth, evolution and expansion in life, music and art. With its rolling bass riff, this first piece of music in three years, is a whip-smart de-testosteroned twist on heavy rock. It arrived alongside a video by noted alt-pop director Colin Solal Cardo, famous for collaborations with Charli XCX, Robyn, Christine & The Queens and Phoenix. The video deconstructs a classic rock performance by drawing on Bob Fosse and All That Jazz, featuring a brilliant performance from Ellie in the middle of a host of dancers choreographed by Emmy Award-winning choreographer Ryan Heffington (Euphoria, Sia, Kenzo + Margaret Qualley).
Written in Seven Sisters and recorded in LA with Grammy-winning, master producer Greg Kurstin last year, The Clearing reveals where Wolf Alice stand sonically in 2025, delivering a supremely confident collection of songs bursting with ambition, ideas and emotion; The Clearing is a truly timeless record.
Wolf Alice have come a long way since the North London quartet first emerged in 2013 as a young band holding a mirror up to their own emerging generation. Today, Wolf Alice’s fourth album The Clearing finds them at the peak of their powers, grown into a band of generational importance. While the bruised euphoria of their debut My Love Is Cool, which featured the Grammy-nominated ‘Moaning Lisa Smile’, both captured and perfectly soundtracked the experience of youth first cutting their musical teeth, 2018’s follow up Visions Of A Life cemented their rise with a Mercury Music Prize, before the precious hurt of 2022’s Blue Weekend and its resultant UK number 1 and Brit Award for Best Group. In the process, lead singer Ellie Rowsell has grown into a storytelling icon, weaving cautionary tales of how your twenties will hurt you, but in valuable ways. Wolf Alice have also toured the world multiple times headlining sold out tours, gracing numerous festival stages and supporting an array of key artists including pop icon Harry Styles. This summer so far sees them performing at Radio 1’s Big Weekend followed by a top spot at Glastonbury.
Both playful and serious, ironic and straight-talking,The Clearing is a progressive shift from a band whose exploration of love, loss and human connection has already articulated the coming-of-age experience for a whole generation. It’s a classic pop/rock album that nods to the ‘70s while remaining rooted firmly in the present. If Fleetwood Mac wrote an album today in North London, you’d get somewhere close to this run of effortlessly grand tracks, each as distinct as the last. Sonically, there is no waste, no fuss, with more authoritative melodies than the band has ever crafted before. This is a new beginning, and each of the band feels it as keenly as listeners will.
Front and centre of The Clearing is Rowsell’s ever-evolving poetic storytelling alongside an innate desire for Ellie, Joff, Theo and Joel to have fun, secure in their ambition and ability at this unique moment in time. The Clearing encapsulates that freeing feeling of finding a moment of peace and clarity, having survived the freewheeling frivolity of your 20s, emerging into your future and is a portrait of Wolf Alice standing on the precipice of a new decade in both life and art.
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