You really only need to listen to Turn To Dust to understand what I mean: the soft kick drum and the acoustic guitars, paired with singer Ellie Rowsell’s angelic voice, carry all the menace and creepiness of grunge’s best work, but marries it with a sense of experimentation and texture-driven tension.

Wolf Alice holds off on their grunge tracks and influences for most of the record. I suspect they would consider themselves more of an indie band than the saviour to grunge they’ve been portrayed as, despite their influences and heritage, but songs like Moaning Lisa Smile, Fluffy, and You’re a Germ betray their ancestry (and are reminiscent of Nirvana at their absolute best).

But the band really shines when they’re willing to experiment with new sounds: Lisbon is one of the highlights from the record, which snarling and screechy guitars during the chorus and angst-driven lyrics during the verse — but instrumentation that feels more in line with some of indie rock’s best dream pop. Silk is similar, and feels almost similar to tracks from The National.

The experimentation isn’t always successful, but that it’s so interesting is indicative of a general failure of mainstream rock to bring us an artist who’s willing to be bitingly sincere and inescapably sure of themselves. While Wolf Alice’s style is difficult to nail down, it’s hard to argue that works against them — their stylistic variety is held down almost exclusively by Ellie’s vocal work.

If Ellie Rowsell’s vocal work defines My Love Is Cool’s eclectic whole, then it’s hard to define it as anything other than a grunge record: her lyrics are positively Cobain-esque, as she holds up a mirror to her anxiety and personal issues and cogently tells the listener how it is without dwelling on anything more significant than the messiness of it all.

Wolf Alice’s debut isn’t perfect, but it’s a great example of a band struggling to form its own identity. As they move from one style to the next, sometimes trying things out that don’t work, it seems clear that their willingness to try something new will keep Wolf Alice interesting long after their contemporaries and peers have disappeared.

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Apple summarizes their style as electronic folk, but I think that betrays it a little bit. These four songs are beautiful and calming displays of electronic ambient music. It’s like the folks behind Fleet Foxes decided to sing choral arrangements overtop of electronic music: it’s layered, gorgeous synth.

What makes The Japanese House so compelling is that, beneath all the layering and autotune work, there’s a clear soul. This isn’t a quality unique to The Japanese House — it’s been a visible trend in electronic music for a couple years — but The Japanese House excels at pairing it with a sense of minimalism that really puts a focus on the vocal arrangements. So while the music is clearly electronic, it sounds incredibly human and organic.

I think these guys have a good thing going and I can’t wait to hear more.

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This is a band you’ll immediately recognize as being incredibly layered and nuanced with its details. I love it. Chocolate is another catchy radio song that I can guarantee is going to get some great airplay — especially that post-chorus. Sex is as catchy as you could imagine a song on that topic being, maybe catchier. Heart Out sounds like it’s straight out of the 1980’s, and Settle Down maintains that upbeat. Robbers is slower, and that’s when the album takes a turn.

A lot of people might misinterpret the album’s later tracks as being indications that the band can’t maintain a set of quality tracks, but slowing down makes it feel very emotional. Menswear is aesthetically beautiful, and when Matthew Healy finally starts singing, it feels nearly cathartic. Is There Somebody Who Can Watch You is totally different from the rest of the album, but its slow and sad melody makes me pause. I’m a sucker for a melancholic final track.

The 1975 is the kind of album you’ll want to put on repeat again and again and again, and I wish I could just share a Youtube link to every track. A must-listen.

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