It’s always nice to watch a band rise through the ranks.
For every choreographed pop superstar that seems to have sprung up out of nowhere, there exists a hundred scrappy guitar bands, determined to do whatever it takes to maybe – maybe – make a living from making music.
They’ll pile into a third-hand van and race down the M25, sleeping on strangers’ floors and playing a full-energy set to a half-empty room. They’ll gain an intricate knowledge of the UK’s service stations (and what they look like at 3am on a Tuesday). They’ll also grow a sibling-like bond with a handful of former strangers who are now locked into this musical endeavour with them – and what they look like at 3am on a Tuesday.
So, if a band like this does manage to break through from toilet circuit-tryers to bona fide arena-sized rock stars, we think it’s fair to say that they’ve earned it.
And with that in mind, if there’s one band in the UK that’s earned the right to headline London’s gargantuan Finsbury Park, it just might be Wolf Alice.
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We don’t know why, but there’s something about Wolf Alice that’s just made for festival fields.
Maybe it’s the fact that they can open with a relatively new song, Bloom Baby Bloom, and instantly be met with the sight of the entirety of Finsbury Park collectively losing their minds. Maybe it’s the fact that, in Ellie Rowsell, they have a frontwoman whose resting state seems to be halfway between ‘rock god’ and ‘super-cool girl next door’.
Or maybe, it’s just because they’re really, really good.
Early-career singles like Bros and Yuk Foo already sound like indie disco staples, while cuts from 2021’s Blue Weekend are greeted with the same levels of reverence that one might more readily associate with a church sermon than they would a gathering of 30,000 music fans in a field in North London.
It’s hard to argue that Smile, How Can I Make It OK?, and Play The Greatest Hits have evolved past the realm of ‘fan favourites’ and into ‘generational anthems’. And as for The Last Man On Earth, a ballad so tenderly beautiful that any of Wolf Alice’s rock forefathers would be proud to call it their own? Well, let’s just say that there was more than one set of damp eyes in the vicinity of Team One on One by the time that song reached its climax.
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And then, of course, we reach the inevitable finale.
To call Don’t Delete The Kisses a banger would be mildly downplaying it. It’s not just a piece of music – it’s a canon event in audio form. The power of an anthem is in its meaning to each individual, and there wasn’t a soul in that park that wasn’t belting out each and every word of Wolf Alice’s defining song like their lives depended on it.
A swift encore of Moaning List Smile, half of Smells Like Teen Spirit, and Giant Peach, and they’re done. As Sweet Caroline rings across the park, the band have the air of a group who know they’ve gotten the job done; and as tens of thousands of people stream towards the exits, many still singing Don’t Delete The Kisses, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who’d disagree.
