Wolf Alice’s untethered energy captivates Union Transfer

The siren sound that filled Union Transfer on Monday night didn’t happen until about halfway through the set, when Wolf Alice singer Ellie Rowsell held the “alarm” button on a megaphone. Through the noise, she started singing “Yuk Foo”, and the speaker added a layer of distortion to the lyrics:  

“Am I a bitch to not like you anymore? / Punch me in the face I wouldn’t even fight you no more / ‘Cause you bore me / You bore me to death.” 

This track, anything but boring to me, is one of my favorites. It was positioned in the perfect point of the set, bringing the crowds’ energy back up for the final half. 

There were bubbles too, and those took a lot longer to come out. In the second encore song, the final song of the night, purple lights lit up a disco ball, and bubbles came out of a machine in front of the stage.. That song, “Don’t Delete The Kisses,”  wasn’t just visually exciting; where Rowsell’s voice really shined. She’s an incredible vocalist, and an even better front-woman. She has a confident on-stage energy that feels undercut sometimes when she plays guitar. She’s a great guitarist as well, but there seems to be more freedom for her when she’s not tethered to the spot by anything; we also heard this in other moments of the night, like “The Sofa” and “Just Two Girls.” 

In “Don’t Delete The Kisses,” Rowsell asks “What if it’s not meant for me / Love?” She paints the picture, a late night with a gorgeous someone who wants her to take them out. Instead of doing it, she goes home alone and drunk, wondering if any of the good stuff is even meant for her. By the end, she decides her and this person were meant to be in love. It’s a bittersweet song, one that asks the listener to decide what’s real and what’s not. Does she ever act on this realization? Or is she just letting us into her psyche?  This song blew up when it was featured in the Netflix hit Heartstopper, and currently sits at almost 145 million streams on Spotify, and its emotional core makes it easy to understand why.

Wolf Alice were joined by opener Willy Mason, who prepped the crowd with a bit of a tamer, moodier, more classic-rock vibe. Together they managed to cater to every demographic in the audience. Wolf Alice’s most recent album The Clearing came out on August 22, and is already shortlisted for the Mercury Prize. They worked with producer Greg Kurstin, who produced albums with Adele and Beck.