patrick wolf

patrick and paris

when it comes to music, movies, commercials, and television –i live in a virtual cave. thing is, i don’t mind living in my little bubble away from the latest episodes of the o.c. and brittney’s latest venture. but when you live in a cave, you still have to go out and hunt for food (in this case my metaphor for food is media/content). while hunting one day i came across a wolf, patrick wolf. now for all i know, mr. wolf could be all over the radio and mtv without me even knowing*, but i doubt it.

so let’s get to it, patrick wolf is a young english musician. it was love at first hear, for me. from there it only got better!

the first song from patrick i heard, paris, caught me by surprise. the song starts out with three violins in a classic style, all three are patrick no less. i felt as though an orchestra would follow the violins. is patrick wolf a classical composer i thought? a brief pause followed by a “heyaa” completely wiped classical music smile off my face.

a high energy drum machine coupled with aggressive distortion synth chords hit you in the face immediately. holy crap this is crazy!

through the song the violins appear and disappear, the heavy distorted synth smashing also visits us throughout the song. his melody is catchy, yet atypical. there’s a raw, bitter, uncontrollable rage to this song. he closes the song of with none other than an accordian and his lyrics "all in the palm of your hand". genious!

my favorite line from the song:
"i found myself in paris, in that cemetary rain" - patrick wolf, 'paris'

i expected to hear this same tone throughout the rest of his album. again i found myself surprised. some of his songs are more tender, some i would call more vulgar.


in an interview, i read patrick wolf quite joni mitchell. she said something along the lines of ‘your first work as an artist confines you to your future works’. pat took these words to heart and made his first album as erratic as possible, as to not lock him into a certain style of music. lycanthropy (his debut album) accomplishes this goal. oh, and he released it when he was 20 years old.

download: paris
download: to the lighthouse
download: epilogue

*note: i gave a sneak peek of 'paris' to a fellow music lover friend of mine. she said it sounded like NIN. i wanted to strangle her at first, but i remembered that she, unlike me, had at the time only heard the song once. she hadn't heard the other tracks, and didn't know what i was hitting her with. NIN is as close to patrick wolf as dr. dre is to the killers. or perhaps the cave i dwell in has transformed me into a complete looney.