Wolf Alice are in a class of their own when it comes to the Mercury Prize.
Last month, they received their fourth consecutive nomination for the coveted music award thanks to their new album, The Clearing.
That’s something no-one else has ever achieved. Not Arctic Monkeys, not Radiohead, not Pulp. What’s more, they’ve done it with their first four albums.
“For some reason, it makes me feel really anxious,” admits singer Ellie Rowsell, speaking to the BBC from Nashville, where the band are in final rehearsals for their world tour.
She’s speaking from experience. When Wolf Alice won the Mercury Prize for their second album, Visions of a Life, in 2018, Ellie struggled to gain her composure at the podium.
“I’m so nervous,” she exclaimed, her hands shaking, before bandmate Theo Ellis stepped in to finish the speech.
To fans, Rowsell’s jitters might have seemed strange. On stage, the singer is normally a fireball of intensity, screaming punky anthems like Yuk Foo and commanding the spotlight with magnetic charisma.
But their more intimate songs portray her as an habitual outsider who doubts her own abilities and motivations.
On Thorns, the pensive opening song of The Clearing, she even berates herself for “making a song and dance” about the break-up that inspired Wolf Alice’s previous album, Blue Weekend.
“I don’t know if I’m shy. I think I’m socially inept,” she recently told Canadian DJ Tara Sloane, external. “I’m very confident in some things, but I’m not the loudest person in the room.”
