- Label
- Bloody Chamber Music
- Release date
- 1st June 2009
- Genre
- Pop/rock
- Buy this album
- Order CD
Fourth album from glam maverick emerging from hard times.
Patrick Wolf has been having quite the time of it lately. Having been defenestrated from his major label, Universal, after the commercial failure of his last album, The Magic Position, his recent activities have included threatening to quit both music and a Britain that fails to “understand” him.
Wolf’s music has always been similarly overwrought and hyperventilating, a lurid and flamboyant amalgam of Celtic folk tropes, arch glam rock and plain old-fashioned showing-off, yet this album is notably more muted. The feather boas are gone on tracks like Damaris, a luscious slice of electro-brooding that strongly recalls the sly alchemy of mid-nineties Depeche Mode.
He knows his way around a tune and benefits from an eclectic crew of guest artists that includes actress Tilda Swinton, Brit folk icon Eliza Carthy and, on the pulverising techno of Battle, Alec Empire. The Bachelor is a patchy album, but one that makes you pleased Patrick Wolf is still in the game.
More to try:
Bat For Lashes: Two Suns
Depeche Mode: Ultra
