A little over two weeks ago, Wolf Alice closed their tour of some of the UK’s smaller venues (in support of Music Venue Trust’s ‘Revive Live Campaign’) with a duo of performances at Pryzm, Kingston – hosted by Banquet Records.
After 18 months away from moshpits and sweaty crowds, the under 18’s alcohol free show set the bar high for any future gigs one may be in attendance of. The setlist was an absolute dream with older fan favourites like ‘Giant Peach’ and ‘Don’t Delete the Kisses’ sandwiched between newer material from the quartet’s most recent and probably their greatest release yet ‘Blue Weekend’. The result was an utterly spellbinding performance that I know I’ll certainly never forget.
The band leapt straight into the gig with the fast paced ‘Smile’ before leading into much loved favourite ‘Bros’ which made for an emotional few minutes for a majority of the crowd.
‘Delicious Things’, a highlight of both the album and the gig itself, was just magical and had an almost cinematic quality to it as sparkly guitar notes circulated round the room.
One of the band’s best qualities throughout their musical career has been the ability during every set they do, to shapeshift from outbursts of anger (‘Formidable Cool’) into emotionally sensitive ballads of a sort (‘`Safe from heartbreak (if you never fall in love’) that get the whole crowd swaying and ultimately made for another completely mesmerising break in the set as almost everybody in the crowd had put their phones away and were just listening to Ellie and Joel belt their hearts out.
As the set entered its final half, bassist Theo Ellis and guitarist Joff Odie were high on the buzz of the crowd as they took it in turn to hype the packed room up for the thudding punkiness of ‘Play the Greatest Hits’ and of course, what followed was a chaotic mess of limbs as the crowd erupted into an albeit glorious, (not quite yet) post pandemic mosh pit).
The breaks were slammed on hard with a beautiful rendition of the already extravagant piano ballad that is ‘The Last Man on Earth’, with keys provided by none other than Ryan Malcolm, a former member of the two piece ‘Superfood’. The set was drawn to a sad close with arguably one of the greatest love songs in history, ‘Don’t Delete The Kisses’ and what a magnificent ending it was – it would’ve only been better had the set been a lot longer!