London four-piece Wolf Alice have spent the last few weeks immersed in the unique communal chaos of Laneway Festival, reconnecting with Australian audiences after eight years and discovering new favourites on a stacked lineup.
For bassist Theo Ellis, the festival offers something that few can: a shared orbit where artists move together from city to city. It’s an experience that encourages curiosity and a deeper sense of presence – whether that’s catching his peers’ sets, absorbing the atmosphere, or watching songs from his own catalogue take on new life in front of different crowds.
Beyond the festival fields, the visit has also heightened the band’s appetite for what’s to come next. Wolf Alice are set to return to Australia later this year for a run of headline shows in December, including some bucket list venues that promise a very different kind of intimacy to the Laneway stages. It’s a chance, Ellis says, to focus less on winning over passersby, and more about deepening an already existing connection.
Ellis caught up with Rolling Stone AU/NZ while in Melbourne, to reflect on the joy of being back in Australia, the shifting meaning of long-loved songs, the challenges of constant touring, and what shaped the band’s 2025 album, The Clearing.
Rolling Stone AU/NZ: How has it been being back in Australia playing Laneway? Back after eight years, has it been different?
Theo Ellis: It’s been really fun to be back. It was a really cool festival experience back when we did it in 2018. It’s a very unique experience because obviously everyone travels together and is just in and around each other’s worlds for a little bit longer than maybe artists usually are, which is sweet and cool.
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And it’s just such a brilliant lineup. It was amazing last time, I remember it was War on Drugs, Father Drum, Misty, us, Alex G, and that was in 2018. And then this time around, it’s the same. I want to go see Geese today. I want to go see OKLOU. I want to see Lucy Dacus’ set. There’s so much, Australia and music always seems to just get it right.
I caught your set at Sydney and it was incredible. The energy was so good. Are there any songs that you think, from the Wolf Alice catalogue, that come the most alive in that festival setting?
This is probably the dumb answer, but “Don’t Delete the Kisses”. t’s been funny playing that song lately, it’s been the first time I’ve realised that that’s almost an outlier. A lot of people seem to know that song and it seems to be a bit of a like, get on each other’s shoulders moment. It has been in the past, but maybe not quite as much so at these shows. It piqued my interest. I don’t feel like we’ve ever made a song the same as “Don’t Delete the Kisses”, or even in the same vein before.
When I grew up going to festivals, I went to Reading festival, and it was masculine mosh pits, drunken, kind of whatever it was. And now, I pretty much just see young girls, just everyone doing their thing. It’s a different landscape when I look at that. And that’s really amazing. So that song, yeah, I think it seems to do the right thing when it gets to festivals.
When a track like that is so connected to something, the cultural moment from its appearance in Heartstopper for example, does that change the meaning for you guys as a band?
The words can change. I mean, you know, Ellie [Roswell, vocalist] wrote the words. The words can change the way you feel in relation to them day by day, almost as time passes. That song is like any song to an extent. That’s part of the beauty of it, it is an evolution with how you feel in relation to it. This is a bit of a waffly answer to that question. But I do believe that.
Like playing “The Sofa”, you kind of get this sudden insight or you feel different in relation to it or playing a song that you’ve been playing for eight years, since I was last at this festival. That sort of thing.
How has it been playing songs from The Clearing, like “The Sofa”, what’s that experience been like, bringing it to Australian audiences for the first time?
Yeah, it’s been really fun. I’m really looking forward to the shows at the end of the year now. You can do more of your own interior Wolf Alice world at your show, because you like to think people would understand it more and are more familiar with what you’re doing. So I feel like we can bring more than this very curated performance that we’ve been doing in other places here. And that’s going to be really enjoyable.
It’s been great playing these festivals as well, because a lot of people don’t know who we are so it’s been fun trying to win people over on stage and just contribute to the overall vibe of the festival, because Laneway is a brilliant thing to be part of.
I think it’s safe to say you’ve definitely done that! You mentioned the upcoming Australian shows, are there any particular cities or venues that you’re looking forward to playing the most?
We’re not going to venues we’ve played before, but I think we’ve played in all the cities. I think we’re playing the Botanic Gardens in Melbourne, I had dinner with my mate last night, who lives here and said it’s his favourite place in the world, so that will be an honour. These are outdoorsy shows, which is fucking mental to me. Doing the Sydney Opera House set steps, which is obviously one of the iconic landmarks in the world, is crazy. And someone said something about one of the venues involving ice cream, but I can’t quite remember what it is.
Ice Cream Factory in Perth!
Is it actually an Ice Cream Factory? I’ll find out in December I guess.
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You talked about curating set lists more for festivals than headline shows, are there any surprises that fans can expect from the run in December?
It will be different to what we’ve done before just because it’s so far away. And I know that the way that we work is we want to develop and change things because it’s hard to do something with conviction if you get bored. So, in a way, what’s exciting is, I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure for something so far away, it’s not going to be the same as what we’ve done anywhere else in the world. I think it will be slightly different. I say that and then I’m going to rock off and play exactly the same thing I played!
You guys have been on the road a lot, you’ve played some huge festivals – Glastonbury, for one – and you’ve toured North America, Europe, the UK, you’ve got Mexico coming up in a couple months… How do you keep up with how crazy your schedule is? Do you have any sort of rituals that you do on the road that help you stay grounded?
Yeah, it can be hard. There’s a push and pull between giving in to how mad it is and trying to ride that wave and literally go with it and be like, ‘This is mad’. I think being able to speak to people at home often and kind of like puncture the bubble that you create by being on tour and try and have some kind of normality there is helpful. And, you know, that’s easier said than done, because we’re not home that much to keep home life going.
I think we’re friends as well in the band, which is really helpful. We care about each other. So if it ever gets too much, we can talk to each other. But it’s definitely mad, do you know what I mean? This is a mad thing to be doing.
Is touring a source of inspiration for you, being in these new places?
It’s difficult to do anything creative when you’re on tour as much as we are. And I’m not saying that we’re making any new music anytime soon or anything like that. We’re just trying to figure out how to keep ourselves open to creativity and inspiration while being so busy.
Any tips on that?
I personally get a bit music fatigued or kind of sonically, just the idea of listening to stuff becomes a bit overwhelming if I’m doing so much of it. So I like reading a lot, as much as I can. We’re flying all the time and if you’re not godforsakenly hungover, sometimes it can be a nice little pocket of time where no one can get at you on your phone. It’s all that good stuff – books, films, even just chatting with other people about how you feel or how that week felt. It’s important to try to practice being open to inspiration. It’s a lot easier at home because you can go and do stuff.
But we go to some amazing cities with amazing art, or we get to spend time with other musicians and listen to their perspectives.
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Have you been able to do much of that while on the Laneway run, spend time with the other artists on the lineup?
Yeah, I mean, not that they know this, but I’ve been very inspired. I went to see Alex G at the Sydney Opera House, we went down and watched the show and it was amazing. Alex is one of my favourite musicians, I think. His songwriter is unbelievable. And his whole band were brilliant. It was a seated gig, which is a bit of a hack if you’re on tour, because you’re like, ‘I get to sit down for a bit and I get to be inspired by Alex G.’
Win-win, right?
Yeah, exactly!
I want to touch on the album, 2025’s The Clearing, a bit more. This was your first time working with Greg Kurstin, wasn’t it? What was that like? Did working with him bring any unexpected surprises?
Greg has an incredible set of skills. He’s a brilliant producer, sonically, but he’s also an incredible musician. I think for me, my fondest memories were watching him communicate, sat at the piano, because he could really tell you what he was suggesting. It was cool to have him sit down and play in the room with us and be a part of the band a little bit.
I mean, it’s a very band centric album. It’s kind of one of the principles, we wanted fans to be able to see the players in their heads when listening to the album and almost be in the room. It was great working on everyone’s individual parts and how they flow through the songs, it felt kind of old school in that way.
He’s also just a really nice guy. That goes a long way sometimes. It’s an emotional thing, making an album, you’ve got stuff riding on it and you care about it, so for people to be caring and nurturing when you’re in those spaces is pretty sick. And he was both of those things.
What’s the reception been like since it came out last year?
It’s been great. I mean, it’s been amazing. We’ve done some things that we’ve never done ever as Wolf Alice, and it’s been incredible. We’re really proud of this record. I think it’s that weird thing where we’ve been working on it for a minute, so now I’m kind of thinking about what’s next for the band.
A lot of people want something from you when you’ve been doing something similar for a long time, so I know that a lot of people think there’s not enough distorted guitars and there’s not enough of one thing, not enough of another. We’ve pivoted and moved in so many different directions in the past that you don’t know what you’re going to get with the next album so it’s been interesting. This one really feels transformative to me, and I can’t really vocalise why.
As you said, some have said the sound is very different to previous albums, like Blue Weekend or Visions of a Life. Was that a purposeful thing then, using less of that grungy sound?
Yeah, I think a lot of the energy that we were chasing was different. Talking from my own perspective, the energy of distortion pedals and those grungy sounds were things we’d done a few times. So not to say that we’d never do that again, like a distorted guitar playing a power chord is one of the greatest things on Earth, but I think we were chasing some of the energy that comes very particularly from the songwriting and the craft of songwriting.
This time, one of the sonic differences is there’s less in the songs. We would put layers and layers of tracks and it would be very, very rich in terms of how much was in it. And this time we were challenging ourselves to an extent to see if we could still get the message across or feel like we succeeded in making the song we wanted to without using all of that kind of stuff. So there was an element of restraint, which I think has informed how it sounds. It was a sign of us challenging ourselves to see what we could do with less.
If you looked back at 2017 Theo, or 2017 Wolf Alice when Visions of a Life came out, would you imagine making the music you’re making now, or to be where you are now?
Wolf Alice of 2017, me of 2017, I would not expect to still be doing anything. I’ve spent most of my life waiting for the rug to be pulled from under me. So no, I’d be really proud. I don’t think I’d expect we could play technically some of the ways that we’re playing at the moment on the new record. So I’m really proud of everyone for that. That feels like there is a constant evolution and a want to challenge ourselves. 2017, me, would just be like, ‘What the fuck is going on, no way, you can’t tell me any of that stuff’.
It’d be the same with Blue Weekend me, to be honest. When we were doing that, it was a hard record to make and we were desperately trying. So the fact that the record actually got made, I wouldn’t have believed.
On that note, getting to play in Australia twice in one year must be a pretty crazy thing too, right?
Bucket list business. I love it.
For tour and ticket information, see here.
WOLF ALICE AUSTRALIA 2026
Wednesday, December 2nd (18+)
Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane, QLD
Sunday, December 6th (18+)
Hindley Street Music Hall, Adelaide, SA
Tuesday, December 8th (18+)
Ice Cream Factory, Perth, WA
Friday, December 4th (Licensed All Ages)
On the Steps, Sydney Opera House Forecourt, Sydney, NSW
Saturday, December 5th (Licensed All Ages)
Live at the Gardens, Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, VIC
