The Bachelor

What a mess indeed. Imagine Carl Cox and Paul Weller made an album together. It’d either be the greatest collaboration ever or simply, surely, the worst. Patrick Wolf’s fourth album leans toward the latter statement.

First this reviewer must distance himself from the fact that he looks like dear Patrick (slightly) and loved one of his earlier songs (‘The Magic Position’) of which its title’s meaning is still slightly ambiguous. Kinda. It was a great pop song but Wolf looked quite ridiculous and far too outlandish even for a gay celebrity, preening about strikingly like a ginger Peter-Pan. Next he was rallying off cries of, “Oh why ME”, “why little old ME”. The English public doesn’t get me, and so forth and so apparently retired aged 12, going on 42, or thereabouts. It all looks like he lied now. The little scamp. Because boy is he back; wearing his little pleated heart on his soggy sleeve, wiping his nose with it and sniffling to mommy, brimming with, what can only be described as unlimited amounts, of emotive lyrics. The Bachelor.

In lay man’s terms there is one colossal problem from the get go with this album. It is all over the place. Eclectic albums are, by and large, usually, absolutely rubbish. But it’s not as simple as that here. It’s, well, a game of two halves really: the slow songs are all violins and choirs, the fast songs are full of bleeping computers and noisy cantankerous techno gadgets. It does not fit together, none of it. It’s a wholly unbalanced album from the first track to the fourteenth.

Patrick’s saving grace is that he’s actually quite good at writing songs. Such a concept as The Bachelor in anyone else’s hands would certainly have been an entire calamity. There are saving graces here; the beautiful highlight of ‘Damaris’ (God damn Darmaris, he loved you) replete with a wonderful use of violins. ‘Hard Times’ is plush and easy, attractive in structure and form. ‘Who Will’ is gospely greatness and ‘Blackdown’ is an elegant, concentrated piano ballad; precise and professional in its make. There are therefore, extremely strong moments but really Paddy; is it any wonder the English public just don’t get you because then you go and produce such unrelenting awfulness with the likes of the whiney ‘Oblivion,’ the truly insane genre destroying ‘Count of Casualty’ and the unforgettably bad ‘Vulture.’ It’s one extreme or the other with this guy. His moods and tastes are erratic and swing wildly from minute to minute, from track to track.

A lot of refining is needed here (a shorter album would be nice too) and a clear path required before he starts the next album; genre, style, structure, etc. A path Wolf really, really has to stick to and prevail. There are too many ingredients here; all flourishing and weeping majesties and drama and far too many operatic moments. How could Patrick Wolf ever be taken seriously with such unreasonably unbalanced stuff? He just can’t.