Every so often, an album comes along that means so much more than just a piece of music. Radiohead’s OK Computer encapsulated the paranoia of the pre-millennium, technology obsessed world. Nirvana’s Nevermind provided a voice to the disaffected, apathetic youth of the early ‘90’s. And Wolf Alice’s debut My Love Is Cool is the quintessential album of the Snapchat generation, for a world in which attention spans have depleted, mass-media consumption has skyrocketed and listening habits have incorporated every genre under the sun.
If there’s one thing to expect from My Love Is Cool, it’s the unexpected. ‘Take You’re A Germ’, for example, in under three minutes goes from creepy, sparse verses to a breakdown with such heavy distortion that Kurt Cobain would be proud, to a screeching, bopping chorus that wouldn’t sound too out of place on a Pop Party CD. Throughout the album fun and serious go hand in hand, big choruses come out of nowhere and genre boundaries are left by the wayside.
They dabble in breezy pop on ‘Freazy’, go from emotional to groovy and back again on ‘Silk’, get their folk on in ‘Turns To Dust’ and the epic ‘Swallowtail’ and present us with snarling, heavy grunge on ‘Giant Peach’ and ‘Fluffy’. Hip-hop influences stand alongside rock ones, each song holds the potential to go in unexpected directions at any given moment. The only consistent thing throughout the entire album is the fact that pretty much everything they attempt to do is a roaring, resounding success, and in this sense Wolf Alice are exactly what a modern guitar band should be. They have taken two steps forward with one eye firmly placed on the past, embraced wide-ranging influences and presented us with a debut album that is both intricate and charming, unashamedly fun and, quite simply, brilliant.
