LOS ANGELES, CA- I have followed Wolf Alice for close to a decade, always missing the touring cycles or hearing about the shows a little too late to make it. They were one of those bands I kept promising myself I would finally see the next time they passed through Los Angeles. Somehow, life kept getting in the way. The years kept stacking up, the albums kept getting better, and the anticipation just kept building.
It ended up taking me almost ten years to finally walk into a sold out Wiltern and see them with my own eyes. The moment the lights went down, it felt like something I had been preparing for without realizing it. And almost immediately, I knew that a simple concert review would never be enough. Wolf Alice’s music has traveled too far and stretched in too many directions for a straightforward recap. Their evolution deserves something broader, something that acknowledges the artistic distance they have covered from album to album.
Before Wolf Alice took the stage, the night opened with Willy Mason, a singer songwriter whose work pulls from folk, country, and blues with a grounded honesty that struck a chord with the audience quickly. Mason has been releasing music for years and built a reputation for intimate storytelling and a warm, weathered vocal tone.
Seeing him live filled in the missing context. His set moved between quieter moments that felt introspective and heavier, almost psychedelic passages that carried a darker energy. It was a surprisingly elastic performance that matched the spirit of the evening. Mason feels like an artist who has spent a long time refining his craft, and his presence set the tone for a night that was going to be about musicianship as much as emotion.
Once Wolf Alice appeared, the wait suddenly made sense. They are not a band you simply step into lightly. Their body of work spans so many tones, moods, and eras that seeing them perform live feels like stepping into a world that is constantly shifting. Their debut album, My Love Is Cool, introduced them as a volatile mix of grunge leaning guitars, punk edge and soft spoken vulnerability. That record alone moves from whisper delicate folk passages to explosive rock climaxes, and it did so in a way that felt unfiltered and youthful. None of it was exaggerated. It was simply who they were.
Their second album, Visions of a Life, stretched that identity into something stranger, more intricate and more ambitious. The band started leaning into unexpected textures, shifting rhythms and moments of near experimental wandering, all while keeping the emotional core intact. Tracks could be airy and dreamlike or jagged and aggressive, sometimes in the same verse. That album proved that Wolf Alice was never planning on settling into a single lane. They were already building multiple lanes at once.
Then came Blue Weekend, which almost redefined them in the public imagination. The production widened, the songwriting deepened and the emotional palette sharpened. It was cinematic, intimate, expansive and bold without losing the scrappiness that shaped them early on. It is the kind of album that makes people fall in love with a band all over again, even if they have been around since the beginning.
Now there is The Clearing, their first major label release, and instead of tightening their sound to fit a mold, they opened it up even further. It feels classic and modern at once, leaning into seventies rock influences while retaining their instinct for dreamlike atmospherics. It is ambitious without being bloated, confident without being calculated. If anything, this album feels like the moment they realized they could be anything they wanted to be and no one could tell them otherwise.
Hearing this evolution unfold live at The Wiltern was the moment everything clicked. The Clearing’s songs washed across the room with theatrical scope, but then they pivoted into old favorites that reminded everyone that this band still thrives on grit. When they tore into “Giant Peach”, something in the room snapped awake. It was a reminder that beneath the polish and the beauty, Wolf Alice still has that wild, snarling energy that powered their earliest work. That moment for me was the thread that tied all four albums together. This is a band with no fixed shape. Every album is a new reinvention. Every track is a new version of themselves.
Seeing them live for the first time after so many years made me fully appreciate how far their music has traveled. Each album has carried a different emotional temperature, a different palette, a different version of themselves. Yet the throughline has always been their refusal to repeat an idea simply because it already worked. The frontwoman commands the room with instinct and intention. The lead guitarist shapes entire landscapes with tone and texture. The rhythm section fills every corner without crowding anything. They play like a band that knows exactly who they are at every stage of their evolution, even when that identity is in flux.
Which brings everything back to The Clearing. Hearing those songs live clarified just how ambitious and self aware this album really is. It doesn’t feel like a band chasing scale for the sake of it or softening edges to fit into a major label box. It feels like Wolf Alice taking full stock of everything they have ever done and choosing to refine it rather than run from it. The Clearing carries the confidence of artists who understand their own history and are now shaping it with purpose. It is an album built with intention, imagination and a real sense of craft, and experiencing those songs in the context of their older work made its depth even more striking.
Standing in that packed Wiltern crowd, it became obvious why their fans show up no matter what era the band steps into next. They trust the evolution because the evolution is guided by artistry rather than trend. After almost ten years of waiting to see them, this performance felt like a confirmation that Wolf Alice is not only still growing but growing with vision. The Clearing is proof of that, and hearing it unfold live only underscored how powerful that growth has become.
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LIVE CLIPS
