Closing the final day of In The Park Presents at Exhibition Park, the band arrived with the confidence of a group who have spent years perfecting the art of transformation. Across a career-spanning set, Wolf Alice moved effortlessly between delicate intimacy, sprawling indie-pop and the kind of full-force chaos that first made them impossible to ignore.
Gospel Oak offered one of the evening’s more tender moments, its softness drifting across Exhibition Park as the sun began to disappear. In the setting of a huge outdoor show, however, the band’s quieter material occasionally found itself competing with the inevitable hum of the crowd. Conversations carried through the field and distractions threatened to puncture the atmosphere, but even at their most understated, Wolf Alice possessed enough presence to keep thousands of people watching.
As the set pushed forward, the band began peeling back the polished layers and reconnecting with the unruly energy at the heart of their catalogue. Ellie Rowsell became increasingly animated, throwing herself around the stage as the temperature of the set steadily rose.
Play the Greatest Hits was exactly as feral as it needed to be, arriving like a warning shot before Smile detonated across the park. Distortion swallowed the stage, basslines hit with full-body force and, for a few minutes, Exhibition Park no longer felt like an open-air festival. It felt like Wolf Alice had somehow squeezed thousands of people into a dark, sweaty venue and turned the volume up until the walls shook.
Few songs in Wolf Alice‘s catalogue have taken on a life of their own quite like it, and its position at the end of the main set felt almost inevitable. As the synths of Don’t Delete The Kisses swelled, the crowd became a choir, thousands of voices carrying Rowsell through the song’s final, euphoric moments. It was the kind of festival scene that feels almost cinematic from the outside but, standing in the middle of it, completely overwhelming.
The encore abandoned subtlety entirely. Diving headfirst into some of their most abrasive material, the band unleashed the heavier side of themselves with little interest in slowing down. A fleeting burst of Nirvana‘s Smells Like Teen Spirit sent another wave of excitement through the crowd, while You’re a Germ brought the jagged riffs and glorious disorder that longtime fans have spent years falling in love with.
Closing the night with one of their most explosive songs, Giant Peach, Wolf Alice delivered a final reminder of just how powerful they can be when everything clicks into place. Every member of the band felt locked in, turning the song into a huge, chaotic release and bringing the evening to a suitably thunderous conclusion.
But rather than disappearing into the darkness with the kind of brooding rockstar mystique you might expect, Wolf Alice ended the night dancing around the stage as Three Lions rang out across Exhibition Park. Waving a flag emblazoned with their own faces and laughing their way through the final moments, they looked less like a band carefully protecting their cool and more like four people genuinely enjoying the absurdity of how far they’ve come.
A band still evolving. Still experimenting. Still finding new ways to surprise themselves and everyone watching.
All images and words by Caitlin Flood.
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