patrick wolf?

HOLY SHIT. Bermondsey Street. Wow.

Halfway through, and this is the LP that Magic Position wanted to be, perhaps? The joy doesn't feel as shiny and Disney as it did on TMP and Get Lost, and the album still has its somber moments, but they're suffused with deeply felt contentment.

PW albums always have this undercurrent of restlessness and searching - whether its the youthfulness of Lycanthropy, or WitW's running away to the country, or TMP's escapism, or The Bachelor's darker nihilist search-of-self thing. But the resolution that happened at the end of the last album with Blackdown/Theseus/The Messenger's really stuck.

The back half will take more getting used to, specifically 'The Days' and 'Slow Motion'. ' Time of My Life' is good, but was better as that loop-y rough demo from two years back. 'Together' is fucking awesome and between that and the Who Will? (Buffetlibre Remix) I still want PW to do a front-to-back dance/house album.

So do I, definitely.

Oh shit. I just realized. I was mentally describing Together as New Order/Kraftwerk production, but that synth line is a straight lift from Moroder and 'I Feel Love', isn't it?

And maybe it's just that I'm in the mood for this now and two years ago I was very much feeling The Bachelor-type feelings, but 'Together' epically murks so much of everything.

I'm excited to hear this in its entirety; glad it's made at least six people here super happy.

And I forgot to do a POX, but could only get down to 11. Arbitrary constraints, anyhow.

POXI

Teignmouth
A Boy Like Me
Godrevy Point
Paris
Together
Bluebells
This Weather
Bermondsey Street
Blackdown
Hard Times
The Stars

I feel like making an excited post where I go "BERMONDSEY STREET!!! WOW!!!!! AMAZE!!!!!!!!" so I can be one of the cool kids, while actually just going up there to visit my hand doctor.

He turned up in my dreams last night, which means I have really, REALLY got to stop caning his music so much. Why couldn't I have dreamed of Tilda Swinton instead? Sigh.

Haven't heard Lupercalia yet but Bermondsey Street did sound great the two times I've seen it live.

My POX includes a lot of the singles, and, having got into him through Wind in the Wires, Lycanthropy is the one which I enjoy but don't immediately think of any individual songs from apart from Bloodbeat.

The Libertine
Accident & Emergency
Tristan
Hard Times
The Stars
Bloodbeat
Get Lost
The Stars
Oblivion
The Sun is Often Out

I absolutely hated this album on first listen.

But, given that was my reaction to PW as a whole, and I relented upon intensive relistening, I'm going to try and spend some more time with this album to try and find a way in.

My biggest problem is that I simply cannot relate to it. Albums about love - fuck 'em - they make about as much sense to me, as albums about god make to atheists. It's not just the blankness of "I don't get it" but this actual loathing of "I think this construct of romantic love and 'happily ever after' is actively harmful to people." The cynic in me wants to say "check back in 5 years, he'll write a brilliant divorce album when he hits his 30s." Because PW is brilliant at capturing that pure, visceral, completely in the moment sense of being so consumed by emotion that whatever he is feeling RIGHT NOW, he is unable to even contemplate ever feeling any other way, whether that is the ecstasy of romantic love or the misery of isolation or frustration. But the problem is, right now, he is in-a-moment that I cannot share. I could viscerally understand and relate to songs about restlessness and alienation and trying to rediscover his heritage and his identity through a sense of place. I cannot get with "I'm in love happy skippy lovey lovely love love land"

(Which brings up the issue of, does one *have* to relate to songs to love them? No, of course not, sometimes it is the very strangeness and complete foreign escapism of songs about things which are so completely out of your experience as to be new and exciting which is appealing. But this whole "happily ever after" is not strange and foreign in that way, it's so overly familiar because it is the pink, Disney shaped oppression on which I have been choking my entire life.)

But there's another part of me that thinks it's brave and amazing that here is an album which is not written in metaphor or code or double meanings, but is openly written as a love letter from one man to another. BUT at the same time, I get angry and disappointed at the sense of missed opportunity. I'm going to use a very very clumsy metaphor of marriage vs civil partnership - that I understand why gay and lesbian people want legal, social, cultural recognition of their partnerships, that is 100% important and necessary. But marriage is such a thoroughly rotten institution, riddled with sexism, inequality, patriarchy and corruption, why the *fuck* would you want to buy into that? If you have the opportunity to create an egalitarian, fair and progressive form of partnership without the awful religious and legal baggage of marriage, why can't we create equality of straight people and queer people by opening up civil partnership as this better, wider thing for all, and kick marriage as a concept back into the dark ages. And that's kind of how I feel about PW writing about The Redemptive Power of Romantic Love and "Happily Ever After" - Romantic Love and "Happily Ever After" just make me want to *vomit* no matter who is singing about them.

And sorry, I wasn't impressed by the cosmic disco stylings of Together. Too pastichey for me, feels more like PW just trying on another outfit change, rather than any real genuine affection for the genre. Like cosmic disco is supposed to be about the tension between highly controlled mechanised synthetic music and utter abandonment and ecstasy in the vocals. PW is too mannered, he always seems like he's got too much of an eye on the mirror checking out how his wig looks to surrender to the real ecstasy necessary for that kind of music. Which is odd, because he has certainly, in the past, shown that he can do *real* abandon in his vocals, but often it's at the point where his music is at his most stylised and mannered classical or folk.

I think I would absolutely *hate* if PW made a full on disco or house record. I think I would only like such a thing if it were strange and formal and mannered with lots of odd classical allusions and soft electronic piano and wibbly space strings and featured a video of PW wearing white shorts and a tank top, running in slow motion across pristine Scottish beaches with his blond hair flapping in the wind - oh wait, that record has already been made and it was by Vangelis.

Anyway those are my confused and probably controversial thoughts on first listen. I will probably flipflop on this, because the *strength* of my negative reaction and loathing of it has such an emotional force, and things I feel that emotional about, I can switch from hatred to love much more easily than disinterest to love. I will probably regret posting this. Please don't SB for this post or misread it as "OMG K is against teh gays" because feh! romantic love, vomit, fullstop.

(Would still like a video of PW in white shorts & tank top running across pristine Scottish sands with blond hair flopping a la Nigel Havers, though, please, thanks. Would like very much.)

Maybe all the semi-political explanations are diversionary activity and the simple truth is green eyed envy. This album *hurts*, in that it is a world from which I have been so totally excluded from.

In order

1.Overture (his vocal at 3.55 is a bit special)
2.Who Will? (Don't rate The Bachelor at all but this is beautiful, his best vocal)
3.Tristan
4.Accident & Emergency
5.Wind In The Wires
6.The Childcatcher
7.The Magic Position
8.Bloodbeat
9.A Boy Like Me
10.(Let's Go) Get Lost

Thanks for this, Kate. Being a smug married, and probably of the worst kind (we never see anyone! We just got an allotment!), I can't quite understand, but I can empathise to a certain extent, and I really appreciate you posting this here. I'm hoping the pure craft and joy of the album will seep through, but if it doesn't, that's cool. I'm definitely getting a big emotional hit out of it, and I'm unsure how much is "objective" this-is-greatness and how much is recognition of a state I know.

I cannot get 4 songs into this album without bursting into tears. That does not mean it's a bad album; probably the reverse. But I can't listen to it.

The first four are the most happy-happy-joy-joy ones, the invincible ones.

This is very different to any of his previous albums, but it's right up there with WitW for me now. Time Of My Life, The Days, and Armistice are definitely more ruminative, and show a maturity alongside the invincibility of stuff like Bermondsey Street. Together is awesome. Agree that in many ways this is the record that TMP wanted to be, but at the same time that's not a bad record at all. There's an honesty to this that's sometimes been subsumed in drama or hissy fits before.

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15492-lupercalia/

Not that I imagined this would get a decent review after the mediocre reception The Bachelor got, but this still seems unnecessarily eviscerating. For all of PW's quirks, I never get the sense that he thinks himself above pop - half of TMP's press was him talking about how much he appreciated/admired Britney et al., as was all the discussion about the stage show for The Bachelor. And while he certainly tries to shoot for universal on Lupercalia it doesn't really feel impersonal.

Ah, well.

Ian C does a mealy-mouthed hackjob on every PW LP for PF now, seemingly. I have no idea why.

And unfortunately, much like he did on his reviews of The Magic Position and The Bachelor, Ian Cohen is operating like someone who doesn't trust his audience to think at his level, offering a subtly condescending review.

^^^^^fixed yr post, IC.

Subconscious self expression if I ever read it.

Aye. Having seen Patrick live several times, especially at the Palladium in December 2009, he trusts his audience. At the Palladium the crowd went mental at Hard Times, so he adjusted the set list and turned it into a glam disco. Ian's a hipster; hipsters aren't gonna get Lupercalia.

I love that his own label is called "Bloody Chamber Music" btw
I'm not gonna do a POX but "Demolition" would probably be #1

The Falcons is just gorgeous. Combines the panning electronica of 'The Stars' with the the string arrangements of Wind in the Wires, and a lighter touch on the industrial beats of The Bachelor. The end effect is like a higher budget take on a Lycanthropy song, much like The Messenger on the last LP.

He really knows how to finish an album, huh? A Boy Like Me, Land's End, The Stars, The Messenger, The Falcons. They all represent a definitive resolution to their individual albums, and a mission statement for them at the same time.

DUDE. "Together" isn't I Feel Love at all, it's Metropolis. With a side order of Together In Electric Dreams for the Moroder riff.

Just finished listening to the new album for the first time, I really wasn't impressed. Together is brilliant and The Falcons is really pretty but apart from those nothing else stuck out at all. It reminds me of when Rufus Wainwright put out Release the Stars a few years ago, it sounded like he had tried to make a really polished pop record but it sounded totally flat to me.

Maybe it will grow on me, but at the moment you can put me in the prefered him when he was unhappy camp.

I've come around on this album, so I'm no longer in the "preferred him when he was unhappy" camp so much. Well, maybe I've pitched my tent just outside the border.

The only song that still *really* bugs me is Bermondsey St, which I hate as much as others seem to love it. But stuff like The Future, it's painful but I find it beautiful. The staggered little melody on that "You come near, I see my future clear and a thresh-hold appears..." line and the high harmony an octave up is so lovely that I'm willing to forgive it the U2 guitar solo.

I'm touch and go on the "big" production. It's weird how his songs in a way sounded so much *more* epic when they were so much simpler. It's harder to sound epic and sweeping when you've got just a violin and voice than when you've got billion pound studio strings at your disposal - but somehow more effective. That said, there are some gorgeous string arrangements on this album - The Days is completely swoonsome, those drooping strings make me melt.

It bugs me though, that House has lifted that backing progression off something else - not the melody but the countermelody on the violin. And it probably isn't actually James, but it really reminds me of something like Simple Minds or Modern English, like I keep wanting to sing "stop the world and melt with you" along with it or something *like* that - but it's probably not a straight lift, more like a clever reference. I dunno.

This is getting very positive reviews.

That Guardian review you posted was supposed to be positive? Crikey, I'm beginning to understand why some of you hate Alexis Petriedish so much.

Hahahaha, yeah, he's an odd one.

It's 4 stars, the F&M lead review, but it gives almost no impression of what the album sounds like and spends most of its duration going "most people think Patrick Wolf's a wanker, and well, he's a cheerful wanker now".

...and wearing *clothes*! That makes him GAY!

Never mind that you open the Guardian Weekend every week and there is Alexis Petriedish, wearing clothes, and talking about them in detail.

Oh my god! Red cullottes! The gender binary must be preserved at every cost! Also, the APRICOT HORN! (Did I mention that I, the writer, Alexis Petriedish, despite having a girl's name and appearing, wearing clothes, every week in the GIRLY style section of the newspaper, am totally and completely straight and not impressed by any of this, except, well, he sounds happy now, and to prove I'm so totally not threatened by gay dudes at all, I'm going to namedrop Rufus Wainwright.)

Anything else? Oh, I should also mention that I have the soul of a wrinkled prune and not one ounce of imagination or allegory by comparing an allusion to a celtic poet to "ha ha, angry drunken welshman". Four stars!

Why on *earth* would Patrick Wolf be angry at "good" reviews if this bit of utter imcomprehension is what passes for a "good" review.

Oh god. I've become an angry Patrick Wolf fan. Shoot me now.
::throws self off Godrevy Point::
::thinks again and restrains self because I've actually had coffee with the poor sod whose job it is to fish suicides out of the Hell Mouth::
::throws Alexis Petriedish off instead::

There's a Guardian football writer called Barry Glendenning who bascially doesn't like football at all except as a conduit for his third-rate standup routines, Petridis is basically the musical version of that. Except less funny.

Yeah. The Petridis review was jaw-dropping. It manages to be baffled at yw PW could find review offensive and stupid while being offensive and stupid.

My favourite bit was where he couldn't understand what might be homophobic about marketing someone specifically as a niche "gay musician".

OK, Sing?

SING.

Fucking SING. Holy fucking shit in the name of all the is holy the vocal arrangements on that song, aaaaahhhhhhhhh.

Wow.

CD has arrived here. Sounds fabulous not got to bonus disc yet.

Sing is just next-level John Tavener polyphonic vocal harmony that just makes me wish he would quit pop music forever and just write Elizabethan motets in, like, 16 part harmony for the rest of his life.

Honestly, the first time I heard it, I know this is such a cliche but I genuinely had shivers going up and down my spine it's just so emotional.

None of that lovey love-love land crap, just genuine amazing, powerful, inspirational - dare I say spiritual - stuff.

My CD and bonus disc has been shipped but Canada Post is on strike for the foreseeable future. Sigh.

::whistles innocently::

check your ILXmail...

Thx. I had the b-side version of that from my 7" single of The City, but this is really nice!

Still upset that Lemuralia does not include "Wild Life". Guess that was one of the ten LA dance tracks he tossed in the trash. Shame.

Oh wow. On proper headphones. This is properly gorgeous. And very different from the version I had. (re: Sing (Acapella Version))

Just realized that the lyrics of 'Together' are

I can do this alone, but we could do this so much better together.
I can make it alone, but we could make it so much better together.

My brain had read in the standard love song codependence, but this is so much more lovely. It's a big sweeping coupley love song, but it's one that doesn't surrender his own abilities or independence or self-worth.

Out today.

That lyric in Together flips it from being really good into being great.

http://thequietus.com/articles/06449-patrick-wolf-lupercalia-review

Good article, Nick!

Canada Post continues to fail me, so I still haven't received my copies of Lupercalia/Lemuralia, but after a week or two of not listening to it, am spinning Lupercalia obsessively. Also, the two new b-sides for the House single are quite lovely. (Mercia and Divine Intervention.)

Hoping that the lack of release for Wild Life on Lemuralia means it will be a b-side for Together or something like that.

Just got this. So far, I'm digging the back half of the record much, much more than the front, particularly loving the stretch from Time of My Life to the end. The string arrangements on The Days are really beautiful, and Together is just glorious.

I love Slow Motion too partly because the lyrics hit home harder for me than any of the la-la-in-love songs on the record. I guess I like that, unlike the other songs, Slow Motion acknowledges what it takes to get to that place where you can finally give yourself over completely to another person ie finding the strength to get rid of all of this --> "Yes, I was too young to weep from the road. And too proud for help, too scared to grow."

Also like Kate, I don't have the stomach for schmaltz - you're not alone, I really dislike Bermondsey Street too (and House. and The City. glad that I more or less liked everything that came after, I was this close to turning it off completely. :/).

Yeah, I agree the second half is stronger than the first. But it seems like it was purposely frontloaded with really pop singles, and hey it worked coz it went Top 40, innit?

this house is wonderful, and the video is really spectacular

I don't know how I missed this remix, but it will bring pleasure to the ears of those wishing that PW would go in a more straight-up dance remix, with bubbling acid 303s and everything, thank you Mr Ceephax

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKF1XgYXUec

Love this homo.