WOLF ALICE, one of Britain’s most revered bands and winner of the Mercury Prize 2018 for their last album Visions of a Life, have announced their highly anticipated third album, BLUE WEEKEND, due for release on 11 June via Dirty Hit. The first glimpse into this new world, THE LAST MAN ON EARTH, was premiered as Annie Mac’s Hottest Record in The World on BBC Radio One, continuing a tradition that started when Annie played Giant Peach, from the band’s Gold-certified debut LP My Love Is Cool, as her first song when taking over the weekday evening show in 2015.
The Last Man on Earth is an evocative return, finding Wolf Alice blurring the lines between classic songwriting, graceful atmosphere and their signature pin-sharp choruses. It is a song full of poise and confidence, the work of a band who raise the bar with every release. Lead singer ELLIE ROWSELL is an artist with a rare songwriting gift – the ability to tread the fine line between consummate storyteller and confessional lyricist. The song arrives with a video by director Jordan Hemingway (Gucci, Raf Simons, Comme Des Garcons) featuring Roswell in the spotlight and signalling a bold introduction to this new era of Wolf Alice.
Elaborating on who the titular The Last Man on Earth is, Ellie says:
“It’s about the arrogance of humans. I’d just read Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle and I had written the line, ‘Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from god’ in my notes. But then I thought: ‘Uh, your peculiar travel suggestion isn’t a dancing lesson from god, it’s just a travel suggestion. Why does everything need to mean something more?’.”
Wolf Alice are ELLIE ROWSELL (vocals and guitar) JOFF ODDIE (guitar and vocals) THEO ELLIS (bass) and JOEL AMEY (drums and vocals). It has been a decade since the band began as a duo of Ellie and Joff, later expanding to a four-piece with Joel and Theo joining the group.
Since then, the band have seen their 2015 debut album My Love Is Cool soar to #2 on the UK album charts, their sophomore album Visions of a Life also reach #2, win the 2018 Hyundai Mercury Prize and receive a GRAMMY nomination for Best Rock Performance. The band also played a massive 187 shows on the Visions of a Life world tour, including a sold-out Alexandra Palace in London, two sold-out dates at Brixton Academy and a set on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury.
It was no surprise that creating a follow up to Visions of a Life was a daunting task. The record was a huge success which subsequently led to many months spent on tour, with intercontinental flights, hotels and long bus journeys taking its toll.
The band decamped to an Airbnb in Somerset, and it was here that they reconfigured who they were together, far away from festival stages, tour buses, awards shows and fans. They cemented their friendship and set to work on some fledgling demos in a converted church. These demos evolved into BLUE WEEKEND, a record produced by Markus Dravs (Arcade Fire, Bjork, Brian Eno, Florence and The Machine) who has aided the band in refining their sound to an even sharper point. Ellie Rowsell’s personal storytelling is at the core of BLUE WEEKEND, an album that sees Wolf Alice embrace a newfound boldness and vulnerability in equal measure.
BLUE WEEKEND will be released on 11 June 2021 via Dirty Hit and will be available on all DSPs, vinyl, CD and cassette.
Pre-order here
