WU LYF Lives: The Return of Indie’s Most Enigmatic Band |
Get unlimited access to everything VICE has to offer.
Turn off all ads on VICE.com
Exclusive New VICE Documentaries
Member Exclusive Features & Columns
Turn off all ads on VICE.com
Exclusive New VICE Documentaries
Member Exclusive Features & Columns
Turn off all ads on VICE.com
Exclusive New VICE Documentaries
Member Exclusive Features & Columns
4 Magazines Delivered to Your Door
WU LYF Lives: The Return of Indie’s Most Enigmatic Band
The near-mythical Manchester quartet returns with its first album in 15 years. They spoke to VICE about imposter syndrome, The 1975, and techno-futurism.
By Adam Christopher Smith
Share on X (Opens in new window)X
Share on Facebook (Opens in new window)Facebook
Share using Native toolsShareCopied to clipboard
WU LYF have always felt more like a cult than a band. Going by fake names and with their faces hidden by bandanas, the Manchester four-piece was treated like a psyop before anyone used that term. The group hacked its way to success, setting up a kind of fan club—the Lucifer Youth Foundation—and using the proceeds to record its 2011 debut album, Go Tell Fire to the Mountain. But soon its members became overwhelmed by the tension between operating as millennial KLF and making “heavy pop” bangers for a double-denim crowd who liked to take their T-shirts off and wave them around their heads like a helicopter.
The band split suddenly in 2012 when frontman Ellery Roberts posted a previously unreleased track online, along with a letter to his bandmates saying “WU LYF is dead to me.” He went on to form Lost Under Heaven with his then-partner Ebony Hoorn. The other members of the band had their own spin-off acts as well, though none captured public imagination like WU LYF had. In the years since its release, Go Tell Fire to the Mountain has remained a boisterous, singular record—the last bastion of a certain strain of indie rock before it collapsed.
For the last few years, it felt as if a reunion might be on the way, with a tenth-anniversary reissue of the album, as well as the release of a book of archive material and limited-edition cassette demos for a second record that never was. Now, that reunion has arrived.
In 2025 WU LYF released the comeback single “A New Life,” with timely lyrics describing how “the center cannot hold.” The same energy runs through A Wave That Will Never Break, the band’s first album in 15 years, which is being released directly through an online membership model rather than streaming services, as part of an experiment to “put the power back in the hands of the artist.”
VICE caught up with Ellery Roberts and Tom McClung as WU LYF began its European tour in Copenhagen, hosting a listening party where fans could hear the album for the first time. In one of their first interviews since reuniting, Roberts and McClung were funny, insightful, and honest about the band’s past, present, and future, the music industry, and the world at large.
VICE: How is it, being back after so long?Ellery: It’s been a trip. I find it quite strange we’re doing it. I’m grateful, but it’s not something I really intended to do. It took on a spirit of its own. WU LYF is like this entity that draws us through. It’s quite intense, and there’s an aspect of “is it healthy to be a part of this?” because it brings up a lot. It’s been tough, and we’ve been through a lot in the past year together, but people’s engagement gives us a pull to do it. It’s almost like serving the people, on a level.
Tom: When we first started, we were really good friends. Then, through becoming a somewhat successful band, we lost that initial friendship, and that led to us breaking up. This time around, most of the work was on how to function successfully together as adults. Getting to the other side of that—understanding and accepting each other for who we are now—has been probably the most rewarding aspect of this for me. We’ve never gotten on better.
Ellery: It’s a bit sentimental, but the fact we’re doing it together is already a success. Whatever happens, that’s what I’ll take to the grave—a joy to have reconnected with old friends and really built something together again.
The reunion was announced just after Lost Under Heaven split, but seems to have been in the works for a while, with Bandcamp merch drops and the WU LYF Archives book.Ellery: Me and Ebony separated, and we had this last song. I wanted to share that before WU LYF kicked off. It wasn’t massively strategized.
The record had reached ten years and was out of print. People were selling copies for silly money on the black market, so we said, “Let’s reissue the record.” We had this archive of stuff on a hard drive and thought maybe we’d make a zine to go with the record, and it just got bigger. It was like looking through family albums. You only take photos of the good times. You don’t document the bad times. So it helped me reconnect and reframe what we were doing, because I’d turned my back on it completely. I’d tried not to think about it for a decade.
The book gives a fuller account of the split. Could you recap what happened for those who haven’t read it?Tom: I can say what I feel........