Wolf Alice are coming to London next month: here’s why…

Wolf Alice are coming to London next month: here’s why you should go

Few bands touring today are as reliably excellent as Wolf Alice. On the go since 2010, they’ve managed to strike the perfect balance between mainstream superstardom and remaining everybody’s favourite indie rock secret.

It’s a secret that increasingly more of us are in on. The band are playing one of the biggest venues in London, the 20,000-person O2, next week – but I’ve been lucky enough to catch them ahead of time during their European tour, for an advance look at what to expect when they reach their home town.

The Columbiahalle, in Berlin, is a much more intimate venue by comparison. There are about 2,500 people packed into the space, but that’s all to the better: it means that the view is excellent, and it’s relatively easy to get a space close to the front.

When they do appear, it’s with a decisive opener: their new songs Thorns, in which Joff Oddie, Theo Ellis and Joel Amey all take up their instruments ahead of singer Ellie Rowsell, who appears on stage with a flourish and a power pose that draws cheers from the crowd.

From there, we’re straight into the thick of things. There are a lot of songs to fit into the hour and a half runtime – more than 20, in fact, spanning four albums – but a lot of those are straight from the band’s newest album, The Clearing.

That means we get Rowsell’s defiant Bloom Baby Bloom, followed by drummer Joel Amey’s groove-heavy White Horses (though his vocals are lost slightly in the noise from his drumkit), before old-school hit Formidable Cool appears to get the crowd jumping.

One of the band’s greatest strengths has always been in how nimbly they can turn from thoughtful – wistful, even – to high-octane fury, and there’s lashings of that in evidence here.

Leaning Against The Wall is a testament to the former. As the stage is washed in pink, Rowsell strikes poses while crooning out the lyrics to one of the band’s sweetest love songs. Straight after that comes How Can I Make It OK?, from their excellent second album – but the crowd’s energy really picks up when they launch from there into Bros.

Towards the end, the energy ramps up. You’re A Germ features Rowsell at her screamiest, belting out the lyrics into her like she’s trying to settle a score; after that, the triple whammy of Yuk Foo, Play The Greatest Hits and Silk is eardrum rattling.

They do manage to save the best for last though. Don’t Delete The Kisses was the band’s breakthrough single, and still has a raw potency to it that is amplified a thousandfold live. In the tiny Columbiahalle, it’s electric; at the O2, it will likely set hairs on end. It’s a compelling argument for going to see them again: see you there.