There was a woman, sitting outside a small town Iowa tavern yesterday, who could be looked at and immediately elicit the reaction of, "Now there's a lady who has spent a goodly portion of her lifetime in bars." She was rough and haggard, missing plenty of teeth and the ones she had were mostly rotten. She was malnourished and looked uncomfortable without a cigarette in her mouth. It's no telling the volume of hardship and sadness she'd gone through thus far in her life. She might even be immune to it now. This is just the way it is. She is stuck with her life. She's likely stopped looking, if barely trying. It's just a shuffle, rather than a waltz, or anything gracefully executed. Her cheap thrills have only gotten cheaper. She comes to mind, only as an example of the extremes that people can fall to when they give themselves over to inertia.
It's here that we find ourselves in the context of Wolf Alice songs -- a world that's spun itself into a dim version of its former self. There are teeth bared and spots on muscles that are more than mildly bruised. There's a feeling that there should be a way to punch/swing oneself out of this mess that's been made. There are plenty of signs that point to a warm seat outside the tavern, but the slightest little sparkle could lead to improvement rather than disintegration. Singer Ellie Rowsell sings of the many possibilities, advising her characters to not chicken out, knowing that there's still a choice that has to be made. You can feel it in the fluttery waves of sound that her mates draw up that nothing could be less clear than these choices. There's no accounting for what REALLY makes someone happy. It could be sadness.