It’s cold outside; it’s wet outside. Thankfully, on Friday night we had a good old fashioned rock and roll show to help us all forget Ohio still thinks it’s January as a sold-out and sweaty A&R bar welcomed two of the best bands to spring out of England in many a year in the musical forms of Wolf Alice and Slaves.
First up were Slaves, a two-piece band that have managed to jump from a niche gimmick band to one that can sell out some of England’s biggest venues. With a stripped down sound that sits somewhere between Madness, the Sex Pistols and a British council estate on a boozy Friday night. It’s unapologetically brash. A refreshing throwback to DIY punk that we haven’t seen in a while and the duo’s energy was more than enough to win over the A&R crowd that initially looked scared to death.
Wolf Alice are another band that’s had a fast-track to success. It was only a year ago that they were still rock’s best kept secret. Now, it’s all Brit award nominations and sold-out shows both back in Blighty and over here in the US, albeit in much smaller venues.
So here we are, April 8th in Columbus at a packed out A&R bar in front of a enthusiastic and very diverse crowd full of young women lining the front of the stage, tiny kids that had no chance of ever seeing the stage, and rock and roll veterans trying to not look like the oldest person in the room. It’s unusual for a fan-base to have such range, but does make sense given Wolf Alice’s deep sonic well.
The band blitzed through their 60ish minute set with little breathing room between songs. Ellie Rowsell and company look a lot more comfortable on stage than they did when I saw them last year. Rowsell, flanked by Joff Oddie and Theo Ellis, is the almost perfect front-woman, able to switch between wispy-fragile vocals to face-melting-holy-shit screams at the drop of hat. It’s a more commanding presence but, much like Wolf Alice’s music, still avoids being pigeon holed.
Oh yeah, the music? It was good, really good. They look like grunge, and occasionally sound like it. The riff heavy tracks ‘Giant Peach’ or ‘Germ’ could easily of spawned in the 90’s, but that’s just one part of the Wolf Alice puzzle as the band look just as comfortable slowing things down or cranking up the effects pedals for the dreamy ‘Silk’. Even drummer Joel Amey got to sing his sleepy “Swallowtail” as Rowsell faded into the background.
The band closed out the evening with a rocking version of radio-hit ‘Moning Lisa Smile’ and sent the packed house back out into the soggy Columbus streets we’d all but forgotten about.
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Matt Ellis is a freelance photographer who covers bands that visit the city and the Columbus Crew MLS team. More about Matt can be found at Matt Ellis Photography.
