On their third and best album, the London four-piece embrace a more polished, widescreen sound that serves their sharp writing on late-20s anxieties. There’s a very striking line midway through the fourth track on Wolf Alice’s third album, a pointed burst of righteous anger called Smile: “I am what I am and I’m good at it,” shouts Ellie Rowsell, “and you don’t like me, well that isn’t fucking relevant.” This is swaggering stuff, particularly from someone whose public image, as Smile points out, is that of a sensitive artist, a wary interviewee. Then again, perhaps Wolf Alice have the right to swagger. Two Top 5 albums, a Mercury prize and a Grammy nomination into their career, they have come a long way in a climate where what would once have been called “indie” music is supposed to struggle. On the face of it, they seem like a very 2020s kind of band, built for a pop world in which relatability and mild aspiration is more important than glamour and the selling of dreams. For all the attention from Vogue – “Here’s How An It Brit Does Glastonbury Style” – Rowsell seems noticeably more “older sister’s famously cool mate” than “rock star blessed with otherworldly charisma”. Her lyrics tend to deal in the everyday frustrations of twentysomething life; whether in character or not, it comes as a mild shock to hear her singing about accepting any drugs she’s offered in Los Angeles on Blue Weekend’s Delicious Things.