I’m not about to hide the fact that I invested in Patrick Wolf’s latest album, The Bachelor. I along with hundreds of other people purchased shares via Bandstock and/or TWIN, and frankly, I don’t think the return spread across that many shareholders will be terribly lucrative. But I don’t think that’s why any of us did it; we wanted to contribute and be a part of a piece of art from a truly dynamic artist. I’m not going to encourage you to buy The Bachelor because I stand to get two dollars; I want you to buy it because it’s an exquisite chronicle of a lonely, faithless human surviving at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Though Wolf decided to scrap the planned album called Battle and go with two albums over two years, this record is undoubtedly fighting fit and sees Wolf taking a battleaxe to his demons. This is Wolf wresting back control of his life, his art and his career. More than with any of his previous three LPs, I get the feeling that this record meant everything to him, and that he was going to oversee every last detail in the telling of this painful, heart-desiccating story. I mentioned this fact before in my review of the first single, Vulture, but Wolf seems to be less of a mythological character and/or folktale in this new work; many of the tracks are time specific and littered with unveiled personal detail. Rather than a lackadaisical romp through the English countryside or allusions to Peter Pan, libertines, childcatchers, medieval lovers, or gypsy kings, Wolf takes you to his blackest mental states in very real, urban places in L.A. and London.
Additionally, the story is traced through all aspects of his art, including the stunning liner notes, which take the form of a hardback book and which feature real, yet surreal, photographs of Wolf in various guises against a backdrop of forest and field; there is seamless meld between medieval quest and modern ordeal. The disc itself is emblazoned with both cardinal and carnal directions, including the phrase “your appetite so dangerous.” And in a deliberate act of contextualization and connotation, this album cover returns to the same pose and textual design as his first album, Lycanthropy; though the similarity is definitely there, the contrast is made all the more obvious, and it’s as if to say Patrick Wolf has matured from a runaway street urchin into a battle-weary prodigal son. The Bachelor heaves with unrest and yearning, and not for escape as in many of his earlier songs, but instead, for release.
The 50-second instrumental intro, Kriespiel, a siren-like barrage of electronic sound, screams into the opening feedback of the second released single, Hard Times, a passionate call to arms if I ever heard one. Set against frantic violins and electronic samples, Hard Times is one of Wolf’s best, and when he soars almost unexpectedly into that chorus, it feels like breaking through on the crest of all the rubbish we deal with on a daily basis. The lyrics are deeply reflective of the musical chaos and the mood of a post-911 world:
Divided nation
In sedation
Overload of information
That we have grown up
To ignore…
Mediocrity applauded
Through these hard times
And I’ll work harder, harder […]
Forced to count the hours
Since two towers
Fell to fiction those higher powers
Putting gods to war
Who keeps the score?
That second verse, along with the fantastical atmosphere of the liner note imagery, evokes a Tolkienesque epic mythology to the events of 9/11. The song is both a challenge and a rallying cry, utilizing a choir for the words “resolution” and “revolution” in the chorus and providing a brief respite of solidarity in a vortex of solitude. As Hard Times screeches away into the distance, actress Tilda Swinton comes in with her first bit of narration on the album and the quieter, seething Oblivion scrambles in like a muddied commando. Swinton, a spectacular choice for this element, comes in periodically throughout the album, sounding like both a polite navigation system and a benevolent matriarch; life would be so much easier if everyone had an inner guiding voice that sounds like Tilda Swinton. Oblivion has a violent edge to it as Wolf sings through clenched jaws before launching himself into a swandive into the void he initially resists and fears. Wolf slips back into some of his folkier roots with the title track, a song with lyrics adapted from a traditional Appalachian poem called “The Turtle Dove.” There’s a fantastically dark groove to the song that takes in both the blues and celtic ballads, and the interplay between Wolf and the raspy voice of Eliza Carthy is even more intense than his duet with Marianne Faithfull on the last album. The refrain of “I will never marry” takes on deeper meaning as other songs on the album explore same sex relationships and in light of Wolf’s vocal opinions on Proposition 8.
The cinematic beauty of Damaris also recalls some ancient celtic magic, including sweeping violins and Irish whistle. While the song can be read as a lovelorn ballad to a dead lover, the fact that Damaris is the Hellenization of the Celtic name Damara, the goddess of fertility, allows for a lament for the death of spring and renewal, and all of the attendant meanings. As Wolf and his choir chant ‘rise up,” it feels like a powerful pagan hymn. After more Irish whistle, Swinton comes back in with the brief, but comforting “Just a little further up the hill boy/You’ll be home soon enough” to signal the beginning of Thickets, one of the more positive songs on the record. It’s a gem of bucolic bliss as Wolf appears to come to himself amidst the burnt-out wasteland and wreckage of his life; as he sings “What have I become?,” you can smell the blossoms and berries pushing their way from the hinterlands of his better memories. This sense of awakening and epiphany continues as Count of Casualty slides in with the electronic elements of an Atari ST. It’s a dark, sludgy wade through the mire of technology and its resultant alienation. Wolf ties the losses of current perpetual war with the lack of real connection in a world of counterproductive social networking:
I dare you
Log off
Sign out
Delete your friends
Start to count
Your
Count of casual
Count of casualty
As death tolls mount and statistics cease to have any tangible meaning, so, too, do mounting friend counts on sites like MySpace and Facebook.
In the same vein as the title track, Who Will? is a gentle, plaintive cry to the universe. Its austere organ makes it all the more self-pitying, and the ticking electronic programming and distant thumping drums imitates a distressed heart, straining for the touch of someone who will understand its inner workings. Even as the emotional need mounts, a more physical lust lurks in its midst (the double entendre of the first line: “Who will penetrate/The tightening muscle”). As I said earlier, I’ve discussed Vulture a fair bit already, but it gains some further context within this album, especially following on the heels of Who Will?. The need from the previous song boils over into a self-destructive orgy of breaking senses and nerves. Ostensibly inspired by Wolf’s encounter with a Satanist in L.A., the track feels like shards of obsidian burying themselves in your flesh as you get swept under the wheels of a showbiz juggernaut. The emotional train of thought rumbles down from these dizzying heights into a shady valley for the more subdued Blackdown. Backed by simple piano, it is Wolf’s explicit plea to his family, especially his father, for forgiveness for the way he severed ties with them and his own history. Mentioning Battle, a town in East Sussex, and his ancestors, Wolf reconnects with his past in order to move on. Eventually the lonely piano gives way to a rousing run of drumming and clapping as Wolf seems to lead a wake for his dead self and lays his false, frantic stabs at identity to rest. Mournful strings surge in as Wolf begins The Sun is Often Out, an undisguised tribute to the memory of Stephen Vickery, a poet that Wolf knew, whose body washed up on the shores of the Thames close to where Wolf lives. A meditation on suicide, the song also seems to be Wolf’s way of breaking out of his own self-destructive self-absorption and reaffirming his own will to live. While the majority of the song is laden with sorrow, there is a moment of euphoria as Wolf repeatedly sings “The sun.” The track ends with the lingering line of “Was your work of art so heavy/That it would not let you live?”.
Tilda Swinton’s narration continues its arc of inspiring hope at the start of Theseus, where she continues to echo Wolf throughout this gentle, nudging composition. Friend and one-time tourmate, Bishi, also adds beautiful strains of sitar through this re-telling of the myth of Theseus and the labyrinth. The myth becomes personal as Wolf queries himself with the line on his disc: “And what is this for…your appetite so dangerous?”. Not only does he feel lost and alone, but he appears to have also misplaced his desire and his dreams for the future, unsure of his surfeit emotion and where to release it. The release then comes in the explosive torrent of Battle, the hardest, harshest music I’ve ever heard from Wolf. Rife with electric guitars and smashing drums, it takes on the legions of the conservative-thinking and those hiding their heads under the right wing, waging war on ignorance, patriarchy, homophobes and conformity. The album ends on a softer note with The Messenger, a song that leads Wolf out and away from the thorny path of solitude and confused identity. The music pushes forward in a natural movement of growth like tendrils reaching for sunlight as Wolf takes stock of his life thus far:
Fearless fifteen
First came that dream
To be seen
To know love
The world
And all its stages
Now 25
Look, made it alive
And what a life
I have known
Not going to stop
Never fully grown
The last words on the album are “When all else fails/Remember/Always/The open road” as the music ends in a classical way, almost like the satisfying resolution of a symphony performance. Perhaps as the resolution first sought in Hard Times. At the same time, it remains open, as Wolf vows to relinquish his fears and keep stretching his boundaries. And in that impulse, Wolf displays his humanity, including the flaws that keep him running and yearning. Having stumbled home in tired tatters, he is ready to venture out anew.
Patrick Wolf both asserts and bemoans his independence in The Bachelor in a moving display of honesty about desire, disappointment and despair. This record take you on a journey of Wolf’s fight to find his way through his own wants and to come to terms with the world around him. Wolf’s wasteland is, like T.S. Eliot’s, simultaneously medieval and modern. I’m very curious and excited about next year’s companion record, The Conqueror, the title of which Wolf has said refers to his current boyfriend, William, to whom he also writes a tender note in the liner thank-yous. In his desperate, lonely moments on The Bachelor, where he wonders if he will ever find someone that fits him, Patrick Wolf connects to me, and my loneliness and latent fears and worries, and likely those of so many of us. There may never be complete resolution for my own issues, but this record makes me feel like revolution is possible. My financial investment is negligible when compared to my emotional investment in this album.
CONDEMNED TO ROCK 'N ROLL 
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