Following their 2017 album, Visions of A Life, British alternative rockers Wolf Alice returned to the music scene with their third studio album, Blue Weekend last June. Featuring hits such as “The Last Man On Earth”, “Smile”, “No Hard Feelings” and “How Can I Make It OK?,” the band explores the many different connotations of the color blue.
According to the band, though they spent almost two to three years writing the songs, they only came up with the album title while in a cab in Brussels.
“We got the name ‘Blue Weekend’ when me, Ellie and Joel were in an Uber in Belgium which was where we were recording the album. And then Ellie said; ‘that’s a blue weekend’ because it was such a blue sky, and that name stuck around,” said bassist Theo Ellis during a recent online interview with SoundStrip and other Philippine media.
As blue has two contrasting connotations, the band elected to structure the album around a narrative of a blue weekend to explore its themes. As such, the album starts with a somber, almost gothic atmosphere with songs like “The Beach” and the single “Smile”, but gradually gets brighter and happier sounding, starting from “How Can I make it OK?” to the cathartic crescendo of “The Last Man on Earth.” This effectively allows the band to go through the spectrum of the connotations of blue with ease but still maintain the band’s seamless taste for creating a dreamy atmosphere.
“We liked the two sides of blue-one being sad and one being happy and being full of lots of different emotions,” said Ellis.
In order to further drive the themes, Blue Weekend explores home, the band also released music videos for each of the eleven songs. Each video weaves a continuing narrative within the album, with lead vocalist Ellie Roswell serving as the protagonist.
“Through being in lockdown we were kind of looking for ways of conveying this album and presenting it to people. So we shot music videos. We ended up shooting one video for each song and they become a sequential story or loose narrative of a blue weekend, which was directed by an amazing artist called Jordan Hemingway,” added Ellis.
With Hemingway’s direction combined with the experimentations of drummer Joel Amey on the synth tracks, the aesthetics of the album take on a surrealist 80s vibe with a hint of gothic elements from the ethereal backing vocals on some songs. With those elements in place, the album is simultaneously daring and vulnerable amidst the hazy dreamscape it creates. With its individual elements seeming neatly connected to one another, it is hard to believe that all the band did to create this work of art is to just “chase the feeling.”
“We base most of our directions and decisions on chasing the feeling, which is why a lot of the songs sound different from one another unless you listen to it in the order we put it out on” said Ellie.
“Blue Weekend” is available for streaming on all major streaming platforms.