Two nights. The O2 Arena. December 2025. A tinsel backdrop instead of a massive video wall. No pyrotechnics. No elaborate choreography. Just four people from North London being genuinely, frustratingly, unfairly brilliant.
That’s the Wolf Alice concert experience in a sentence. And if you missed it, you should feel genuinely bad about that.
Quick Facts
| Detail | Info |
| Band | Wolf Alice |
| Members | Ellie Rowsell (vocals/guitar), Joff Oddie (guitar), Theo Ellis (bass), Joel Amey (drums) |
| Formed | 2010, North London |
| Band Name Origin | A short story by Angela Carter |
| London Venue | The O2 Arena, Greenwich |
| London Dates | December 2 & 3, 2025 |
| Supporting Acts | Sunflower Bean and Bria Salmena |
| New Album | The Clearing (released August 22, 2025) |
| Producers | Greg Kurstin (Grammy-winning) |
| Where Written | Seven Sisters, London |
| Where Recorded | Los Angeles |
| Chart Position | UK #1 (30,136 album-equivalent units in first week) |
| Awards | Mercury Prize (won for Visions of a Life, 2018); Brit Award for British Group (2022 and 2026) |
| Mercury Record | Only band in history nominated for all four albums |
| Tour Name | The Clearing Tour (43 dates, 3 continents) |
Let’s Start With the Stage Setup Because It’s Actually Telling
No giant screen. No pyrotechnics. No elaborate set pieces. What Wolf Alice had at The O2 was a ginormous metallic tinsel curtain — silver, sparkling, the kind of thing you’d see at a very cool vintage party — and four musicians who didn’t need anything else.
That’s either supreme confidence or a statement. Probably both. Most arena acts drown their lack of magnetism in spectacle. Wolf Alice went the other direction and bet entirely on the music. Huge, potentially reckless bet. Paid off completely.
See also “Is Plixi Legit? The Honest Answer Nobody Seems to Want to Give You“
The O2. Two Nights. That’s Not Nothing.
The fact that they did two nights at The O2 deserves a moment of appreciation before we go anywhere else. The O2 holds around 20,000 people. That’s 40,000 tickets for two nights in London alone.
They added the second show — December 2 — due to demand. The original December 3 date sold out fast enough that the promoters tacked on another one. For a British indie band on their fourth album, fifteen years into their career, selling out two arena nights in their home city is genuinely impressive.
And they’re not just London. The 43-date tour also hit Manchester’s AO Arena, Birmingham, Cardiff, Leeds, Glasgow. Full UK arenas. This is not a band scraping together decent crowds — this is a band that has built something real over fifteen years.
Actually, Let’s Go Back to 2010 for a Second
Because nothing about Wolf Alice’s current arena status was inevitable. Nothing about it was written in the stars from the start. Ellie Rowsell began this as basically a solo acoustic project. Named after a short story by Angela Carter — if you know The Bloody Chamber, you know the reference, and it tells you something about Rowsell’s literary instincts immediately.
Joff Oddie joined. Then later Joel Amey on drums and Theo Ellis on bass. By 2012 they were a proper four-piece. First single “Leaving You” got BBC Radio 1 airplay. NME put them in the Radar section. Things were moving, but slowly.
The 2013 debut physical single “Fluffy” came out on Chess Club Records. Then “Bros” in May of the same year — a song about friendship that Rowsell wrote early on and that became a live staple immediately. “Bros” is one of those songs that should not hit as hard as it does live. But it always does.
The Setlist at The O2: A Masterclass in Pacing
Twenty-plus songs across the two nights. The average 2025 setlist looked something like this: Thorns to open, Formidable Cool, Just Two Girls, How Can I Make It OK?, White Horses, Delicious Things, Leaning Against the Wall, Bloom Baby Bloom, Bros, the newer The Sofa, then a chaotic run through Yuk Foo, Bread Butter Tea Sugar, Play the Greatest Hits, Silk, Smile, Play It Out. Encore: Giant Peach and Don’t Delete the Kisses.
That’s a set that covers all three albums and the new one. No filler. No resting. No “here’s a slow one so we can catch our breath” moments that drag. They played The Clearing material confidently alongside fifteen-year-old songs, and nothing sounded like an obligation.
One notable moment at The O2: Ellie fell over on stage. Came back up. Commented that it felt like falling for ten seconds. Carried on. If that’s not a metaphor for this band’s entire career, I don’t know what is.
The Clearing: The Album That Brought Them Here
Let’s talk about what they were actually touring. Because The Clearing is the reason those O2 nights happened.
Released August 22, 2025, on RCA and Columbia. Written in Seven Sisters — very North London, very fitting — and then recorded in Los Angeles with producer Greg Kurstin, who has a Grammy shelf that’s doing serious structural work in his house. The combination of homegrown writing and high-end American production gives the album a particular sound: bigger than Blue Weekend, more cinematic, reaching toward something stadium-shaped.
The Skinny called it “lyrically knowing and sonically eclectic.” NME gave it five stars. Rolling Stone reviewed it. The Clearing debuted at UK #1. Then — the genuinely remarkable part — it got nominated for the Mercury Prize. That made Wolf Alice the only band in Mercury Prize history to be nominated for all four of their albums. Four out of four. No other band has ever done that.
When the announcement came, the band said it was “an honour to be shortlisted for a fourth time.” Understatement of 2025, honestly.
The Ellie Rowsell Factor
You can talk about Wolf Alice as a band — and they absolutely function as one, all four are essential — but Ellie Rowsell is something else to watch live.
Born July 19, 1992, in Archway, North London. Attended the BRIT School. Named by multiple reviewers as somewhere between David Bowie and Alexa Chung in terms of stage presence, which is an unusual combination to pull off but she manages it. She’s simultaneously headstrong and intensely interior — not performing connection with the crowd so much as just being so present that the crowd magnetizes to her.
The screams. Let’s acknowledge the screams. When she lets one loose during something like “Visions of a Life” or the heavier runs of the Yuk Foo-to-Smile sequence, it physically changes the room. The Clash review from The O2 said the floor was vibrating and it was the loudest they’d ever heard that venue. That’s a building that has hosted some loud things.
And then she switches to something like “Don’t Delete the Kisses” for the encore, and it’s all vulnerability and precision. The range is just unfair.
Fifteen Years Together and They’re Playing Like They’re Hungry
Here’s the thing about bands who’ve been together fifteen years. Most of them are coasting. Most of them are playing their hits on autopilot, grateful for the pension plan, waiting out the contract. You can feel it when that’s happening.
Wolf Alice doesn’t feel like that. At The O2, reviewers across the board noticed something about the energy — the four of them genuinely feeding off each other. Theo Ellis and Joel Amey described it as “keeping things on the knife edge between tension and release.” Joff Oddie doing what Joff Oddie does, which is play lead guitar in a way that sounds effortless and obviously isn’t.
The band acknowledged from the stage that friendship is what kept them going through fifteen years. That sounds like the kind of thing bands say. But watching them perform together, it doesn’t read as a platitude. It reads as the actual mechanism.
The Grassroots Venues Thing
One detail worth mentioning because it’s easy to miss: Wolf Alice donated £1 from every UK arena tour ticket to grassroots venue fundraising. Every single UK ticket.
That’s not a massive gesture in pure financial terms. But it’s a symbolic one. These are a band who came through exactly those venues — Heaven in London, Club Academy in Manchester — and they haven’t forgotten that. For a band operating at O2 level, acknowledging the ecosystem that made them possible says something real about who they are.
Final Words
Here’s my honest opinion after going through everything. Wolf Alice are one of the best live bands Britain has produced in the last two decades. That’s not a hot take — that’s the consensus of basically every journalist who’s been in a room with them, and it’s backed by actual evidence: the tour sellouts, the Mercury Prize nominations, the Brit Awards, the four consecutive #1 or top-3 albums.
The Clearing is a genuinely great album. Not their best — I’d still go Visions of a Life for that — but the confidence it radiates, the 70s-lux sonic ambition, and the way it translates live to an arena audience is remarkable. They’ve figured out how to sound massive without becoming generic. That’s harder than it looks.
The O2 nights in December 2025 are now past. But Wolf Alice keeps touring, keeps releasing, keeps showing up. Whenever the next London shows happen, you should go. Don’t overthink it. Don’t wait for a better time. Just go.
FAQs
1. When did Wolf Alice play The O2 in London most recently?
December 2 and 3, 2025 — two consecutive nights at The O2 Arena in Greenwich, part of their 43-date world tour supporting The Clearing.
2. Why did they add a second London date?
The original December 3 show sold out quickly enough that a second night — December 2 — was added due to demand.
3. Who were the supporting acts at The O2?
Sunflower Bean and Bria Salmena both supported Wolf Alice across the UK arena dates.
4. What was the setlist like at The O2 London shows?
Around 20+ songs spanning all four albums. Regular staples included Thorns, Bloom Baby Bloom, Bros, Yuk Foo, Smile, Giant Peach, and closer, Don’t Delete the Kisses. New album tracks from The Clearing featured heavily.
5. What is The Clearing about?
Broadly, it’s an album about coming to terms with uncertainty in your thirties — Rowsell’s lyrical odyssey through self-interrogation and hard-earned self-acceptance. Sonically, it pulls from 70s rock and pop influences while staying firmly modern.
6. Did Wolf Alice win the Mercury Prize for The Clearing?
They were nominated — making history as the only band nominated for all four of their albums. They won the Brit Award for British Group at the 2026 ceremony, and received a Brit nomination for British Album of the Year for The Clearing.
7. Where did they write The Clearing?
In Seven Sisters, North London — a significant detail given the band’s North London roots. It was then recorded in Los Angeles with producer Greg Kurstin.
8. Is Wolf Alice from London?
Yes. They formed in North London in 2010. Ellie Rowsell is from Archway. The band is genuinely, deeply a London band.
9. What’s the band name actually from?\
Angela Carter’s short story “Wolf-Alice” from the collection The Bloody Chamber. It’s about a feral girl raised by wolves. Very on-brand for a band that plays with that kind of primal, literary energy.
10. How do I get tickets to upcoming Wolf Alice shows?
Check their official site at wolfalice.co.uk, or platforms like See Tickets, Gigs and Tours, or Ticketmaster. Their UK arena run is now concluded but they regularly tour — sign up for alerts.
11. What’s their best song to hear live?
“Bros” consistently destroys audiences. “Don’t Delete the Kisses” as the encore tends to leave people speechless. “Visions of a Life” if they play it is an event.
12. Have they played Glastonbury?
Multiple times. They’ve headlined the Park Stage and played the Pyramid Stage twice. They performed at Glastonbury in summer 2025 as part of their The Clearing promotional run.
Discover stories that stand at the top with The Pinnacle Magazine.
