After a week of teases, buzzed-about British rockers Wolf Alice have officially announced their first new album in nearly four years, Blue Weekend, coming June 11 on Dirty Hit/RCA Records. The LP’s details arrived Wednesday afternoon alongside its first single, “The Last Man On Earth,” which premiered on BBC Radio 1 as Annie Mac’s Hottest Record in the World.
“The Last Man On Earth” is a statement selection as a lead single, signaling the latest permutation of a band that seems to level up in unexpected ways with each release. Sweeping and atmospheric, the song’s somber piano and strings wreathe singer and guitarist Ellie Rowsell’s smoky, layered vocals as she questions, “Who are you to ask for anything more?” Bass swells courtesy of Theo Ellis betray the depths that Wolf Alice plan to plumb, and finally Joel Amey’s drums uplift the track into anthem mode, with a veritable chorus of Rowsells asking point-blank, “Do you even fool yourself?” The accompanying visual from director Jordan Hemingway (whose credits include Gucci, Raf Simons and Comme Des Garçons campaigns) puts Rowsell front and center, meeting her gaze as she sings.
Rowsell says of the band’s new song: “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?’”
If history has taught us anything, it’s that Blue Weekend will certainly be in play once Mercury Prize nominations roll around this summer; Wolf Alice’s 2015 debut My Love Is Cool earned a nod for the U.K.’s most prestigious music award, while their 2017 follow-up Visions of a Life won the award in 2018.
Watch the “The Last Man on Earth” video below, and further down, revisit Wolf Alice’s 2014 Daytrotter session and see the details of Blue Weekend. You can preorder the album here.
Blue Weekend Album Art:
Blue Weekend Tracklist:
01. The Beach
02. Delicious Things
03. Lipstick On The Glass
04. Smile
05. Safe From Heartbreak (if you never fall in love)
06. How Can I Make It OK?
07. Play The Greatest Hits
08. Feeling Myself
09. The Last Man On Earth
10. No Hard Feelings
11. The Beach II
