A London four-piece remembers the ’90s, and somehow no one broke out “sound of 1995″…
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Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Wolf Alice — vocals masked just so by layers of clashing reverb, teeth gnashed on the chunkier Ash and Hole singles, choruses functioning as bellows for those with crushed ribs from security barriers — are a sign of Sound of 2015 getting it right. “Moaning Lisa Smile” shows such strong promise that getting it wrong would be dunderheaded.
[7]
Alfred Soto: With power chords, electric and acoustic, redolent of another era of the whisper-to-a-scream, this London quartet can do it and the fulsome churn well enough. What else?
[5]
Dan MacRae: It’s like someone built a time machine for the exclusive purpose of figuring out what to plunk in between Seven Mary Three and Tracy Bonham during a no-repeat alternarock workday from two decades back.
[5]
Megan Harrington: In 2011, my childhood favorite radio station, Q101, ceased to exist as I knew it. I’m sure many would date the death of alt-rock much, much earlier, but like some stale relationship that drags on despite its own obsolescence, I didn’t throw the last handful of dirt on the alt-rock grave until this decade. And still! And still, sometimes I will turn to this station for about 30 seconds in some haze of muscle memory and catch a bit of something that sounds like Wolf Alice, and it reminds me that alt-rock is a fetid, decomposing corpse.
[5]
Micha Cavaseno: What are those mythical ’90s everybody keeps talking about? So many separate ’90s get sold to you over the years; so many people’s ’90s were described by records as different as Ten, Illmatic, Loveless, Maxinquaye, Timeless, or whatever the case might have been. And the ’90s I ghosted through as a child have been turned into a boomer-like contraption where everything was so full of vast potential and amazing things and where we, the Johnny Come Latelies, are never gonna do shit as good as them. Wolf Alice, who betray bits of The Breeders-via-Cobain and Ride, could’ve easily been on that Lollapalooza or Reading stage along with so many other important bands. The imitation is a bit mundane, but it’s just as good as any other boring “alternative” staple of a bygone era. It’s definitely better than “Detachable Penis.”
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Thomas Inskeep: Early PJ Harvey x some boring Kerrang!-approved band = “Moaning Lisa Smile.” Docked a point for the horridly punny title.
[4]
Katherine St Asaph: Not one second of this is anything like a sound of 2015; I couldn’t be happier. Also, this is the second alt-rock revival band of this decade I’ve come across who namedrops Angela Carter, after Honeyblood; make that “thrilled silly.”
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Iain Mew: Too many grunge trappings get in the way and make for a song that’s too disjointed to quite soar like it could. Once they get over quiet-loud and push Ellie Rowsell’s cool vocals up against the rush of guitars, though, the combined momentum is formidable enough to bring joy.
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Brad Shoup: Love the hovering chord progression. It’s so elemental. Wolf Alice’s guitars are devastating, a slo-mo chainsawing. The text is a marriage of behind-the-back frankness and hinted-at imagery. Which makes sense: if your plight is confusing, how mixed-up are your witnesses? Twenty years ago, the producer would’ve demanded a reprise of the cold-neon solo, but now the band just sludges onward.
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