Of all the albums celebrating their tenth birthday this year, My Love Is Cool is probably one of the most significant. It may have come out a little after Jamie xx’s In Colour, but I would say the two share the same podium, both having become big time old favourites.

Released in the UK on 22 June 2015, My Love Is Cool came at peak summertime, with glimmering gold artwork to reflect the spark of Wolf Alice as they launched their first full length LP. Creature Songs had come as an EP before it, featuring Moaning Lisa Smile, the track that started it all for me. For a little while, my little obsession with Wolf Alice was associated purely with a certain friendship group. However, it was not long before they became a regular feature on many a radio show and over the years, I have made plenty more friends, and just generally met a whole bunch of people who share my love for good ol’ Wolf Al.

Opening with the sultry tones of Turn To Dust, Wolf Alice tell us “keep your beady eyes on me, to make sure I don’t turn to dust”. Ten years on and it is safe to say that more eyes are on this band than ever, and there are no signs of them fading in to the background any time soon. This track is softly captivating and in keeping with their folk beginnings, a quietly confident number ahead of one of the biggest songs on there. Bros, still very much a staple in the band’s live sets today, is a pure celebration of platonic love, an instant indie feel-good summer hit. Doting on childhood memories it is rooted in nostalgia, a sweet song that instantly takes you back. Listening now, it doubles down on the nostalgia, as I remember hearing Bros in the summer of my early twenties – a second wave of childhood if you will.

The band then take things up a notch and step into the future with Your Loves Whore. It is shoegaze, hazy dream pop with a hefty guitar giving it strength. Wolf Alice have never been ones to shoehorn themselves into one genre, even from the beginning. With lyrics “I could never love you more” it becomes almost a love note to itself in the future. Listening back, I am remembering all over again just what made me adore this band in the first place. The multi-faceted nature of Wolf Alice, they are poetic, sometimes tender, other times rough and heavy, always with something to please the ears one way or another. You’re a Germ comes in fuzzier and grittier with a furious tale of toxic love. I feel like since the second album, Visions of a Life came out, Formidable Cool became the older sister to this track, seeing the “dodgy fucker” type now grown in to something a little more sinister and seedier. As it stands, You’re a Germ is an absolute rager that I still can’t get enough of. The pace slows with Lisbon with an intro that instantly takes me back to 2015. Maybe not exactly my favourite or most memorable on most days, but it certainly has its moments.

Then there is Silk, which has grown beautifully with the band. I am still not quite over their Primavera performance earlier this month, and how they went from the ruckus of Yuk Foo and Greatest Hits, before seamlessly slipping into Silk – it was an absolute dream. I think, out of all the songs on this album, it is the one most in keeping with where the band are today, particularly off the back of their third album Blue Weekend. It almost feeds into a dark academia vibe, with themes of love not as the glue to fix everything, but very much as the architect of pain. I’m not sure I realised quite how sad of a song it was at the time, and that last “My love it kills me slowly, slowly I could die” seems to get louder in my head each time.

From this yearning track we move on to the psych pop fun of Freazy which seems to call back to Bros with its upbeat mood, this time picking up on a different time of life. Finding safe places, living free in the innocence of young adulthood – straight up living life in the moment. It is the midpoint of the album, offering a newfound lease on life, picking up just in time for the pounding drums of Giant Peach to ring delightfully through the ears. When the band released their latest track Bloom Baby Bloom last month, I was so sure I heard tones of this track in the background (or maybe a little of Moaning Lisa Smile*), something heavy burning under this new glamour of theirs. With an intense and long intro, and looking at it retrospectively, this is the first big hint of Ellie’s vast vocal range that has come to the surface in more recent years. She is whispering, she is belting it out and singing sweetly in between it all. I would argue that Giant Peach encapsulates Wolf Alice at their core with one of the best guitar breakdowns in all their discography. I will never tire of this one.

From the riotous Giant Peach we take a smooth transition into Swallowtail, which is in my eyes, one of the most underrated tracks of all. I still think of hearing this live in Margate years ago, a spotlight on Joel, his hair blowing in the breeze. Delicate vocals glide over waves of smooth guitar, and I can almost see the swallowtail butterfly floating over the calm of a lake at dusk. Where Giant Peach amps up ferociously, this takes a slow, somewhat unexpected curve upwards in scorching guitar, before thrashing into a euphoric drum solo.

Soapy Water returns to sadder themes, for me focusing on finding and establishing oneself, all the while battling anxiety in the process. This is definitely one that I paid little attention to at the time but appreciate now on a whole new level. Then in comes Fluffy for another hit of angst before they go, a typical kind of “get me out of this town and on to bigger things” kind of energy. The abrupt finish does make for a perfect close to the album, or so you think. The mellow tones of The Wonderwhy come in, rounding the album off in a meditative state, anticipating future freedom of pleasure in a meandering sort of way. Oh, and in fact, we are still not done, if you stick around a moment longer, in comes the hidden track – finally giving us the eponymous lyrics often alluded to throughout, “my love bends rules, my love is cool“ – an ultra-acoustic outro that leaves the album on a softly satisfying note.

Maybe it is just semantics with the glimmering gold artwork and my liquid gold edition of the vinyl, but My Love Is Cool is forever taking me back to the dusk of summer. It is a cool breeze in between hot spikes of the sun’s rays shining through the trees. A debut album that I have absolutely adored listening to in a new light, and one that will remain a favourite for a lifetime.

*While celebrating this album I also wanted to shout out Moaning Lisa Smile. While it does feature on the US version of My Love Is Cool, it is missing from the UK’s, which I imagine is largely down to the accessibility to their Creature Songs EP over here. Mind you, I have plucked that idea from thin air so it could be anything really. The point is, for a lot of Wolf Alice fans, this track is a big’un and I would be remiss to gloss over it. Especially with reference to their latest offering Bloom Baby Bloom. As I said earlier, I feel like I heard some more of the classic Wolf Alice sound, particularly from Moaning Lisa Smile and Giant Peach simmering in the background of its splendour. It felt like a little easter egg of sorts, even amongst all the wonder they throw out to us in this new venture of theirs, I couldn’t help but pick up on that all too familiar sound. I’m not sure if it was intentional, and most likely it is not, but I also found comparisons between the music videos. Moaning Lisa Smile shows the band coming together as an unlikely group, performing on stage as if awkward teens not quite having found their place. Meanwhile Bloom Baby Bloom sees them own that stage, a full routine and gang of dancers supporting them. They are polished, but not without that raw intensity that ties it all together. It is hard to know exactly what their fourth album, The Clearing will bring on August 29th, but if there is anything I have learnt about this band in the last ten years, is that they always keep you guessing, and never fail to deliver.