THE BACHELOR is out!

‘The Bachelor’ is out! Patrick Wolf’s fourth album came out 1st of June and it couldn’t be more surprising.
The intro “Kriegspiel” opens our ears (and our mind) for a journey to somewhere new; “Hard Times” (the second single to be taken from the album) has guitar and violin all throughout the song, pushing us to sing the addictive chorus; “Oblivion” brings us the first vocal appearance of the ‘voice of conscience’ Tilda Swinton; “The Bachelor” features Eliza Carthy on an astonishing duet about love and death (“All I want is someone who will feed them when I’m gone, cause I know that I’m not gonna marry in the fall and I’m not gonna marry in the spring, I will never marry, no one will wear my silver ring”). This song has a few reminiscences to gypsy music and it’s definitely one of the best and stronger songs Patrick ever wrote! “Damaris” is haunting and sad, hugely orchestrated and electronic at the same time; “Thickets” is a folky song with great instrumentation and fabulous backing vocals, Tilda Swinton also appears; “Count Of Casualty” (the final version of the demo “Wargames” Patrick had on his myspace page) mixtures minimal but aggressive electro with a wonderful choir and strings, the lyrics are almost cliché (“This war without an end, what peace do you defend, this war without an end, what fear do you depend”) but to pertinent to ruin the song; “Who Will?” begins almost religiously (there’s some information that tells it’s a song about his aunt who was a nun) and then Matthew Herbert’s production makes it rise to another level, think Björk in ‘Homogenic’ updated version; “Vulture” is the (almost) mythical collaboration with Alec Empire and that is noticed on the entire song, industrial electro, hard beats, looped vocals, etc, like Atari Teenage Riot dissenter loves; “Blackdown” starts as a calm piano based song, almost whispered in some bits, but when you least expect it turns into danceable Celtic music; “The Sun Is Often Out” is a song about a Patrick’s friend who died, and it’s almost impossible not to cry with the way he exorcises that feeling and how strings surround his suffering vocals, it’s an extremely beautiful and sentimental song; Tilda Swinton reappears in “Theseus”, a song that rises from the beginning to the end with so many details you can’t notice them all; “Battle” is furious, full of rage. Here we find Patrick screaming like never before and, once again, Alec Empire’s rebel touch is evident; the closure of the album is made with “The Messenger” . It follows the same influences as in “Who Will?” and it’s as beautiful; it’s a song about travelling, seeing things and keeping memories…
Patrick Wolf is a human chameleon, on ‘Lycanthropy’ he was a revolted teen, ‘Wind In The Wires’ brought us the lone wolf living in the woods, all during ‘Magic Position’ he surrenders to beautiful chamber pop and with ‘The Bachelor’ he reaches the point of no return, Patrick is now what a true artist ought to be: his lyrics are beautiful poetry, his music is extremely well written, he’s inventive and most of all, he is original! If last century had Björk and David Bowie as its most original and interesting musical characters, this century surely has Patrick Wolf!
The videos for the two singles are bellow, “Vulture” is inspired by some strange, dangerous and exciting experiences Patrick had when touring ‘The Magic Position’ and “Hard Times” is a homage to Elvis Presley and the eccentric Klaus Nomi.