Wolf Alice celebrate Mercury Music Prize success

By Scott Munro
published

Wolf Alice are named winners of the 2018 Hyundai Mercury Music Prize for their second album Visions Of A Life

(Image credit: Dave J Hogan - Getty)

Wolf Alice have been named the winners of the 2018 Hyundai Mercury Music Prize for their second album Visions Of A Life.

The London outfit’s second album saw off competition from artists including Arctic Monkeys, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds and bookmakers’ favourite Nadine Shah to pick up the coveted award and £25,000.

Accepting the award, vocalist and guitarist Ellie Rowsell said: “This means so much to pick this up with my three best friends.”

Bassist Theo Ellis added: “When we first started as a band, I remember the first label meeting we ever had. We walked into a room and the geezer said, ‘You don’t look like a band at all. What are you? What are you supposed to be?

“‘All your songs sound different, you don’t look like each other.’ We never really figured it out, but here we are. So fuck you!”

Wolf Alice later returned to the stage to perform Don’t Delete The Kisses from the follow-up to My Love Is Cool.

The band will head out on tour this weekend (opens in new tab), kicking off with a run of shows in Australia.

Scott Munro
Scott Munro
Louder e-commerce editor

Scott has spent more than 30 years in newspapers and magazines as an editor, production editor, sub-editor, designer, writer and reviewer. After initially joining our news desk in the summer of 2014, he moved to the e-commerce team full-time in 2020. He maintains Louder’s buyer’s guides, scouts out the best deals for music fans and reviews headphones, speakers, books and more. He's written more than 11,000 articles across Louder, Classic Rock, Metal Hammer and Prog and has previous written for publications including IGN, the Sunday Mirror, Daily Record and The Herald covering everything from daily news and weekly features, to video games, travel and whisky. Scott grew up listening to rock and prog, cutting his teeth on bands such as Marillion and Magnum before his focus shifted to alternative and post-punk in the late 80s. His favourite bands are Fields Of The Nephilim, The Cure, New Model Army, All About Eve, The Mission, Ned's Atomic Dustbin and Drab Majesty, but he also still has a deep love of Rush.