Wolf Alice have shared the video for their beautiful new single, ‘The Last Man on Earth’, ahead of the release of their eagerly awaited third album ‘Blue Weekend’ via Dirty Hit on 11 June. Ellie Rowsell says the new song is ‘About the arrogance of humans. I’d just read Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle and I had written the line ‘Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from god’ in my notes. But then I thought: ‘Uh, your peculiar travel suggestion isn’t a dancing lesson from god, it’s just a travel suggestion! Why does everything need to mean something more?’
The piano-led intro reminded us of The National’s ‘Fake Empire’ as Ellie asks ‘Who are you to ask for anything more?’ before it veers into the twinkly space that serves bands like Mew so well. Ellie continues to directly make accusations and ask questions of the subject – ‘When your friends are talking, you hardly hear a word’; ‘Who are you to ask for anything else? The thing you should be asking is for help’ – with gospel-style backing and emotive atmospherics. It feels like – and we don’t say this lightly – this could be Wolf Alice’s equivalent of Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ ‘Maps’.