Nothing beats watching a band play to their own hometown, and on Sunday night, Wolf Alice returned to North London for a homecoming gig that felt less like a concert and more like a coronation.
They fired open with Bloom Baby Bloom, the swaggering first single from their latest album The Clearing, and from that opening moment, the tone was set. Helped along by a stage dressed in shimmering silver lametta that caught the evening light like heat haze."Seven Sisters, North London," Rowsell sings on The Sofa, and that lyric hung over the whole evening. Mid-set, a huge disco ball descended slowly over the crowd, scattering the park with fractured glitter.
The setlist swept generously through their catalogue, but the real surprise came when the band reached all the way back to White Leather, one of their very first songs, with Ellie Rowsell seated within a glowing star-shaped figure at the centre of the stage. It was an intimate moment, the kind that makes twenty thousand people fall quiet at once.
The slow ones, though, were only ever a held breath. "OPEN UP THE PIT" roared bassist Theo Ellis, and the band duly detonated into Yuk Foo and Play the Greatest Hits, the crowd obliging. Rowsell's vocals were, as ever, outstanding. Watching her move between fragile falsetto and full-throated snarl, it is hard to argue she has become anything less than a world-class frontwoman, utterly in command of a stage this size.
They closed the main set with two fan favourites: The Last Man on Earth, all swelling piano and grandeur, and Don't Delete the Kisses, the track that swung them properly into the mainstream and which still lands like a love letter to this city. Hearing thousands of Londoners sing "me and you were meant to be in love" back at a band from up the road was the night's most gorgeous moment.
The encore was a gift for the original fans. Moaning Lisa Smile and Giant Peach arrived with all their early, scuzzy urgency, before the band signed off with an excellent and surprisingly faithful cover of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit, a knowing nod to their grunge-indebted roots.
This was a band playing minutes from where it all began, to a park full of people who have watched them grow from Camden clubs to festival headliners. It is always epic watching a band come home. On Sunday, Wolf Alice did it in style, under a disco ball, wrapped in silver, exactly where they belong.
