patrick wolf?

Haven't heard this guy yet but judging from the album covers he seems to be dabbling in something very "new-romantic"...which begs the question, why isn't Simon Reynolds aaaall over this?!

Will have the check this out on my own...

He's not really new romantic, I'm afraid... more Kate Bush with bits of Aphex Twin.

Aye, but it was the haircut etc that put me off to begin with :)

This is a fucking awesome record.

The percussion & talking & stuffnoise in the background of the title track is a field recording of the Northampton Conker Festival, apparently, some proper mad folk thing with black-faced women banging sticks in a fertility dance.

Vaguely frustrating that more ILM people aren't going FUCKING WOW at this awesome Kate Bush / folk / techno / high-camp orchestral drama pop.

i detect new romanticism in all patrick's work. why don't you?

Fucking love the Wolf boy. His quality control is not always 100% but he is a jaw-dropper.

La Roux is so obviously his replacement in Polydor's eyes, given that she's done exactly what they wanted him to do. And she even looks like him.

Anyway for Sick Mouth. Obviously the boy Wolf has just been coming back from some hellish K-peppered night out in Vauxhall and stumbles across an early morning Status Quo TV appearance. This is fucking mint (sorry if this is upthread, I don't have time to read all of it):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inyJss9GlRE

Ah yes, I remember that incident... odd young man.

arrested in san francisco lol

lol
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/jun/10/partrick-wolf-arrested

hahahhahaha this dude

Amazing music. Insane musician.

such a diva

"Take your shitty-ass music out of this city" - LAPD totally OTM.

Or San Francisco police, even.

I'm finding it difficult to believe that San Francisco would have much of a problem with a flamboyant gay pop star. Until he spits in their faces, obviously.

who the fuck is ian cohen @ pitchfork and what is he talking about?

Ian's an ex Stylus writer, I know him. I like the album much more than he does, but I have to say that I can see his points.

"The Sun Is Often Out" follows up with diminishing returns, struggling for a tune until a coda of choirboy chanting tries to make the preceding events sound like they were building towards something cathartic.

Tries, and for me, succeeds, wildly, terrifically, and heartbreakingly.

That's the thing though, isn't it? Some people are gonna be thrown down weeping by it, others are gonna find it a bit boring.

What about "Tilda Swinton as 'The Voice of Hope'"? Yeah I can see how some people might find that ridiculous. It doesn't bother me for the most part, for one thing her contribution is pretty minimal. On Theseus though I think she's incredible. The fact that she's part of the song, backing up the main vocals instead of just having a random interjection in the middle, really makes it.

I think she's terrific in Oblivion, too. Had it been anyone bit Ian I'd have had a bit of a hissy, but I know he's super reasonable and our tastes overlap a fair bit, so it's not like he'd be anti PW or the record on any kind of principle or remote aesthetic tip.

I mean, he makes solid criticisms of the record, but they seem oddly weighted.

"The Bachelor's strengths sound borne out of arrangements rather than visceral or melodic thrills"

I mean, I would disagree that there aren't melodically thrilling moments, but even if this is true the arrangements, instrumentals and composition hit me in a very visceral way. I love Bat for Lashes and adored St Vincent's first album, and for the life of me don't get his negative comparisons. Patrick's songcraft is as strong as BFL's if not moreso, and while he's not necessarily FUNNY that often (except perhaps darkly, sardonically so), I don't see how humor would serve the goals/themes of THIS record.

Like. Sure...he admires Kate Bush and is kind of self-serious and uses a lot of choirs, but what happened to taking a record on its own terms? If part of the joy of this is that it treats an album as a cohesive whole....address that, maybe?

Just got back from seeing Patrick play the Mod Club in Toronto. Wow. Incredible set...the boy was in top form. Unfortunately, the monitors kept fucking up and halfway through the set he pulled a classic Wolf move and stormed off stage for ten minutes in a huff while they fixed the technical problems. Came back on wearing next to nothing and gave us another 45 minutes or so of music, including a rendition of Vulture that brought him into the crowd, where he stayed for Battle as a bonus, moshing with the entire crowd and passing around the microphone. Nothing performed from the first album, but the other three got covered fairly well.

Intense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY6hSw-BbQ0

.......

"Hard Times" is quite epic, innit?

first two albums - ott yes but quite heartfelt and interesting and clever.

everything since? pretty awful. and he's turned into such a celeby entourage twatty nme diva i can't go back to the old records anymore. THANKS.

LOL. Throwing motion reminds me of Tom Cruise throwing the dog tags at the end of "Top Gun."

Fucking awesome last night at the Palladium.

Hard Times got practically the entire audience on its feet and down the front dancing.

Damn you Britishers and your ability to see such concerts. Who ended up being the special guests?

Florence (of & The Machine fame) and Alec Empire.

i can't get enough of this homo.

Do they sell this t-shirt at his shows yet?

;)

"but he's not gay!"

huh

His boyfriend's gay.

lol

Florence was there? WTF. In what capacity? That's...sort of amazing. And v. unexpected - I would have figured Bishi or something like that.

She dueted with him on the title track of his new album; it's Eliza Carthy on the record.

Bishi was unhappily at home with some kind of horrible lurgey.

Will definitely try and catch him next time around, hopefully whenever The Bachelor 2 comes out.

Hmm. That's interesting - Carthy's voice is much more textured and um...interesting...than Florence's. I quite like Lungs and caught Florence live a few weeks back, but she really only has two setting, doesn't she? Normal and FULL BLARE. Curious how that would have worked.

I would have preferred Carthy, definitely, but Flo did a good job; she's got some timbre there, and exercised some control.

Alec Empire's little solo interval was pointless knob-twiddling, but when he went mental in the context of some actual songs it was great fun.

Test reply.

Have loved both recent singles. Can't fathom why he's not massive. Tried.

http://sickmouthy.com/2011/03/23/why-does-everybody-hate-patrick-wolf/

That made an interesting read. I do like a lot of his music but I was going through my collection recently looking for some CD's to get rid of (this is an on going thing I do) I put on the Bachelor and started listening through, I was really surprised how little I enjoyed it, I always thought it was his weakest by a long way but it's actually just a really poor album. The first album and Magic Position are the two I enjoy the most plus the singles from Wind In The Wires but I really don't have any interest in the new album. I just heard the new single the other day and it left me completely cold.

It's interesting what you say about people really not liking him. I saw him live around The Magic Position album and he seemed in a really bad mood on stage and admitted he was hungover, it was pretty obvious he wasn't into it. It didn't stop me liking him but me and my friends were really unimpressed. I had a similar experience with Conor Oberst when I saw him at Glastonbury but he was such a shit on stage it made me throw out all his albums when I got back, Patrick wasn't that bad. Since then I have read things that have not done him any favours, didn't he attack one of his band members on stage? Also when The Bachelor failed to get nominated for the Mercury music prize he had a bit of a strop saying "what do I have to do to get nominated, in times like this I ask myself what would Klaus Nomi do" well Klaus Nomi probably wouldn't have cried about it or even given a shit about some meaningless award.

I'm probably being too hard on him and I'm sure I like music by plenty of people that are complete twats (hello Mark E Smith) but there is something about him that is quite off putting and people seem to pick up on that. I like interesting pop stars but he tries way too hard and beyond the outfits and changing his hair colour for each album, is he actually that interesting? He seems much closer to Lady Gaga than Kate Bush who is obviously who he's aiming for.

seriously i liked him more when he was a corny Byronic goth as opposed to shiny popstar - wind in the wires remains my favourite album by him.

he's not massive because

a) he's a twat
b) he's a difficult sell from album to album. there's nothing wrong with having a malleable image but he tries too hard to be everything to everyone (popstar, provocateur, moody singer-songwriter, arty hipster) and ends up not pleasing anyone at all.
c) although most of his songs are well-crafted and polished, he doesn't bring anything interesting or unique to the genres he borrows from. usually it's just unconvincing. the problem i have with his later material is that a lot of it feels kinda phony - he wants to do early 90s pop so he writes "the city", he wants to be Cole Porter so he writes "enchanted". it sounds like he's doing karaoke on his own songs. he's got talent spilling out of him but it isn't directed towards a clear vision of what he wants to be as a performer, which is a waste.