Wolf Alice @ Motorpoint Arena

For the penultimate night of the 2025 leg of their huge The Clearing world tour, Wolf Alice graced Nottingham's own Motorpoint Arena with a confidence and conviction which highlights exactly what makes them special and secures their position as part of a new generation of rock royalty. Liz Clarke reports.

It’s always a little tough not to be sceptical when indie festival mainstays announce their first arena tours, even if their popularity has long proven them to be ready. The format of the gigantic commercial domes where a pint costs an appalling amount is, for starters, antithetical to how most of these bands take pride in having started, in rooms with no barrier and (affectionately) a wad of chewing gum for a floor. Ethical associations to grassroots culture aside, though, there’s the more practical consideration of how a band will respond to their need to now take up so much physical space. Fontaines D.C.’s show at the Motorpoint Arena last year, for instance, good as it was, suffered a little from the fact that they seem to have become an arena band almost in spite of the intimacy of their music and their complete lack of interest in being on-stage personalities or having an elaborate display style. From before the support acts even began, it was clear that this wouldn’t be a problem for Wolf Alice, as was proven by the gargantuan rig of silver tinsel that adorned the back of the stage, with an elegant star shape in the centre of it all.

The support acts themselves are Canadian singer Bria Salmena, and New York’s Sunflower Bean, both acts who have evidently been influenced themselves by Wolf Alice in sound and delivery. Salmena appears on stage first, in patchwork denim, to perform her brand of powerful, acrobatic pop rock with a vocal style clearly derived from the likes of PJ Harvey and Courtney Love. Some tracks suffer slightly from Salmena’s band sounding a little too polished and clean for this exact style of music, but the tracks themselves and particularly her vocal skill leave a lasting impression regardless. Her cover of Peaches’ electroclash classic Fuck The Pain Away also fits perfectly into her set and catches me completely off guard, and for that it deserves its own shoutout. Sunflower Bean, meanwhile, have a fantastic stage presence and clearly talented musicians at their core, particularly in their airtight rhythm section, but I struggle a little more to get engrossed in the core tenets of their sound. Their style of sometimes psychedelic indie pop receives a good broad response from the audience, as is proven through the fact that they successfully convince the crowd to wave their phone lights in unison as a support act, however I leave their set struggling to recall what particularly stood out to me personally, with many songs blending into one.

It helps Wolf Alice’s transition into superstars that Ellie Rowsell is such a uniquely compelling onstage presence that no enormodome could ever dream of swallowing her. Roaming the stage in a flower-printed leotard and black glitter eyeshadow, she is at once effortlessly cool and seemingly wearing vulnerability on her sleeve. The arena setup serves her extremely well, as it happens: for the opening performances of new album highlights, 1970s baroque piano rock anti-ballad Thorns and modernist pop rock scorcher Bloom Baby Bloom, she traverses between a staircase built atop the stage and a runway dipping slightly into the crowd, naturally commanding fascination with every step. A little later in the set, during The Sofa, she gracefully spins atop the staircase on a rotating circular podium, a minor spectacle which is employed naturally and with such grace, fitting like a glove with the track’s elegant soft rock style pulled from the likes of Boa and The Cranberries.

Perhaps the only true weakness of the gig itself is a problem not with performance or presentation, but the admittedly varied quality of their songwriting. Wolf Alice are, in my opinion, at their best when they’re grandiose in some form or another: a quality sadly missing from much of The Clearing, outside of some standout tracks. The night’s performances of new album deep cuts Safe in The World and Bread Butter Tea Sugar, along with Blue Weekend folk outlier Safe from Heartbreak (if you never fall in love) in the middle of the show sadly comprise a weaker, less memorable point in the middle of the set. In the case of the latter track, the decision to perform it almost a-capella, with the band gathered standing, harmonising and swaying around Rowsell as she sings, doesn’t quite stick the landing. It’s a sweet and intimate moment, which adeptly showcases her vocal abilities and the band’s closeness with one another, but suffers from the quality of the track itself, whose slightly awkward lyrics are brought to the forefront due to the minimal accompaniment.

The indisputable highest point of the night is, however, also a track from The Clearing performed earlier in the set: the performance of the psychedelic odyssey through family history White Horses is the kind of musical moment that reminds me of why I do this in the first place. It’s quite handily their best track to date, blending the sensibilities of the 1970s Krautrock canon with present day psychedelia and creating a rare truly perfect blend of lyrical theme and musical language. Drummer Joel Amey assumes vocal responsibilities for the verses of the track, and successfully keeps time whilst briefly taking the role of frontman. Already a song with an epic power and quality, the live arrangement, contributed to by touring keyboard and synth player Ryan Malcolm, takes the track’s story of journeying across the world in search of identity and in pursuit of a musician’s lifestyle, from the earth and into the stratosphere. 

It also must be said that Wolf Alice know how to engage a crowd both directly and indirectly. Before the classic indie ode to female friendship, Bros, guitarist Theo Ellis talks about an early gig from the band at The Bodega, with a mention of our beloved Bodega itself of course being enough to arouse excitement in a Nottingham crowd. Apparently, said Bodega gig was the first time they ever got a moshpit, and so Ellis encouraged the crowd to do the same tonight for this track. At a show with this many attendees, a full pit might have been wishful thinking, but the essence was still there: with the amount of people wrapping their arms around their best friends’ shoulders on the pitch being noticeable, whilst others jumped in the air by themselves or in groups. Equally, the Blue Weekend ballad How Can I Make it OK? prompted a full and organised singalong, with the universal themes of the song being highlighted by the passion that the lyrics inspire. The track itself is glacial and cautious in its production and performance, and yet this strangely lends itself nicely to becoming the site for a huge sing-along.

The band also excel when they head in a heavier direction, and this is shown through the live renditions of the likes of Yuk Foo, in which Rowsell brandishes a megaphone like a murder weapon, conviction and anger bursting from every crevice of her being as the band proudly and flawlessly lays down the track’s grunge-inspired volcanic base. Equally, the sass and attitude of Smile closes out the main set perfectly, with the track acting almost as a manifesto of everything that Wolf Alice have come to stand for, where the worlds of frank emotional honesty and a burning desire to be viewed as larger-than-life rock stars, complete with their own iconography, collide. Rowsell’s intermittently confessional rap-singing on the track complements the increasingly iconic guitar riff at the track’s center, with the song’s unabashed swagger being a perfect high note to temporarily leave the crowd hanging on.

The encore opens with comparative calm after the storm that came before, with The Last Man on Earth, appropriately, returning a relentlessly energised crowd to the ground in a hypnotic blast of ambient-toned space rock, showcasing again the band’s willingness to entertain endless styles and succeed in most of them. And of course, there’s a silent agreement within the room of what will come after that: none other than Don’t Delete The Kisses, obviously. This is the kind of song that takes on a life of its own: though not my personal favourite track by the band, it’s testament to any band’s capabilities if they have produced something which takes on this much of a life of its own. If, for whatever reason, the band hadn’t played it, I’d wager that there would’ve been a stage invasion of unprecedented proportions, with a new band composed of unrelated crowd members just playing it themselves. The singalong which the track triggers beats anything I’ve seen all year, with the burst of new-love anticipation and anxiety that defines the chorus translating into a motto for the whole crowd: with the line “What if it’s not meant for me?” almost losing its unrelated literal meaning in the context of the song and being translated instead into a general statement of devotion to this band. The performance of the track itself is the kind of perfection that makes itself look easy, with the wistfulness of the central guitars and synthesisers that decorate the spoken-word verses translating perfectly into a soundsystem built to be heard by thousands of people at once, testament to the band's impeccable musicianship. Rowsell also switches between the conversational style of the verses and the soaring vocal crescendo that the chorus requires with the spontaneity required within the context of the track’s narrative: nothing about this track’s stream of consciousness style ever feels too rehearsed. It’s the kind of track that’s good enough for a band to build a career around milking it, but if tonight has proven anything, this isn't quite what Wolf Alice want, as they look forward and reflect backwards in equal measure.

It must be difficult to transition from the world of Mercury Prize fame and independent venues to the realm in which you can’t really be described as anything other than arena-ready rock stars. It's safe to say, however, that Wolf Alice have gotten it exactly right, balancing that which people already loved about them with new ideas and opportunities which their new scope and magnitude has opened up. It really doesn’t get much better than this at such a level.

Liz Clarke

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Edited by Liz Clarke

Images courtesy of Wolf Alice on Facebook