The vibes are kinda wrong here, scared to know just what goes on here

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's Top 50 Albums of 2021

#2 : Blue Weekend - Wolf Alice



Wolf Alice singer Ellie Rowsell has called Blue Weekend her least autobiographical album: whatever the inspiration, it tells a convincingly lived-in story of embracing nihilism following the rupture of friendships and romantic relationships. “I take you back / Yeah, I know it seems surprising,” she thunders on Lipstick on the Glass. It’s here that Wolf Alice come into their own as adept musical shapeshifters, using their broad influences to explore the extremes of alienation: there are woozy fantasies, self-destructive ragers; stunning anthems of anxiety. Big, confident pop-rock albums are rare these days – and their demise hardly bemoaned – but there’s an undeniable pleasure in finding one adventurous, ambitious and human enough to remind you why they used to be so essential.


I always think I like Wolf Alice but then I listen to them and I'm like "hmmm - do I really?".  So I wasn't sure whether I was going to like this or not.  And, having listened to it - well, I'm not sure whether I liked this or not.  It feels like a well put together album with a lot of expansive sounds on it and I suspect there's a lot in there if you attempt to unpack it - but it wasn't the most accessible message for me.  I'd certainly agree with The Guardian that it's confident and ambitious and I liked some of the sounds a lot, but I'm not sure I'd be happy saying I particularly liked it.  I gave it a re-listen to see if my opinion changed and no, it didn't - it feels close, but just missing something for me.  I like the album cover though - nice use of light.


Wikipedia has a surprisingly lengthy entry with surprisingly little content - all it basically says is that the critics loved it with it being the third highest ranked album of the year on Metacritic.  Which, when I go to Metacritic, turns out to no longer be true - it's plummeted to #8.  Interestingly, all of the top 5 appear on The Guardian's list with the exception of #1 which is Conflict of Interest by Ghetts - and whilst I can assure you that grime is very much not my sort of thing, I'm somewhat surprised that The Guardian hasn't claimed it's the best thing since sliced bread.  Anyways, back to Wolf Alice, the public loved it too - #1 in the UK and #34 in the US.


"Customers also listened to" a load of people I've never heard of - we can only have one more of those on the list, I guess!  I feel like I should like Wolf Alice's offering and I did like some bits of it, but personally I wasn't convinced it all hung together as an album.  Maybe a few more listens would convince me, but I'm not sure when that's going to happen.


#3 - Yeah, I liked this
#1 - A pleasing enough album for #1

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