Wolf Alice have always been a band of many colours, and the band’s latest single comes out on the softer end of the spectrum. If the band’s first single ‘Yuk Foo’ off of their forthcoming album ‘Visions of a Life’ was a deep shade of red, then ‘Don’t Delete the Kisses’ is a pastel pink: delicate, fragile, and beautiful.
The song is a soft surrendering: it is an emotional battle against self-doubt that succumbs into the arms of love. ‘What if it’s not meant for me?’ Ellie Rowsell sings, before her sigh of sweet of surrender: ‘I’m losing self-control and it’s you / it really is’. And it’s Ellie’s vocals that and poetic murmurings that really carry the song; it almost feels like she’s whispering in our own tingling ears. Opening with the hazey sound of a circular keyboard line accompanied by a gentle heart-like drum beat, the band reveal that they can do ‘in love’ just as well as they can do their ‘fuck yous’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtUOH4xoP-I
The band have been revealing the track names for ‘Visions of Life’ through Tumblr-esque postcard messages on their Instagram. They look nostalgic; they look personal, and they look self-contained in a world of love, untainted from the troubles of the world around us. As Ellie sings, ‘when I see you, the whole world reduces / to just that room’. They have given us a song so in the moment, so lost in its own tenderness, that we can’t help but get sucked into it.
Wolf Alice have always been a band that have perfectly captured young angst, but now, with ‘Don’t Delete the Kisses’, they have shown that they are masters of that one thing that keeps us going: young love.
Wolf Alice come to Leeds O2 Academy on 18th November, and you can buy tickets here.
Juliette Rowsell
Image: Getty Images