Patrick Wolf, the beloved pop experimentalist, is finally back after a long hiatus from the music scene with a new EP and a tour that kicks off in Cardiff. Joshua Williams caught up with Patrick over Zoom from his home on the South Coast to find out what he’s been up to for the past decade.
So, it’s been over a decade since the Sundark And Riverlight double album – what have you been up to in that time?
Patrick Wolf: I’ll start with The Night Safari EP [released this month] – that’s the jewel I’ve been down in the quarry looking for and getting dirty. This is the first part of the story I feel I’m ready to tell of that time. I think with The Night Safari, I’m trying to be a better friend to my work and let it speak for itself instead of coming in with my ego first, I want to push out the work first and see whether that can tell the story for me. So, the long and short answer is that The Night Safari tells the first part of the story of that time.
Was it a conscious decision to go for an EP over an album?
Patrick: Yeah, I was working on an album. As somebody that used to make albums about the period of time they’re made in, and which are pretty much a document of those periods of time, when I got to this long period of 10 years there were multiple album projects that kept getting swallowed up by the next one and things being discarded. The Night Safari was the beginning of the album I was making, and then that album just got longer and longer. I realised that if I take that part of the story and turn it into an EP on its own, I can have all this space to write about what’s going on in my life right now.
There’s been some really big life-changing events within the last 10 years – like my mother passing away, hich was a big end of and beginning of a chapter. I think that how grief blossoms and disintegrates certain parts of your heart and soul; I wanted to have enough space on the album to investigate that – which I have had since turning The Night Safari into an EP. In a way, it’s like a preface to the album.
There were a lot of false starts, then?
Patrick: I tried. I tried to go on tour and tried to finish things… so yeah, many, many false starts. I was pretty much realising that I wasn’t well enough to do this and didn’t have any of the structure in place to. For instance, I never had a manager until, 18 months ago, I went to a Christmas party in the seaside town where I live now. My friend Nadine Shah told me that her manager was looking for a new artist, and just through that, things in life started to happen that were like… OK, you’re officially going back to work now! The universe says!
For the tour, are you getting the band back together or are you going to be performing on your own?
Patrick: At the moment I have a band of three people and then me. We’ve got an amazing percussionist and a cellist, and I’m playing a lot of viola and violin for the first time since [2007’s] The Magic Position onwards. The tour is going to be a show in a way – in the way that everything has a rhythm to it. If you imagine going to a concert about The Night Safari, I’m really hoping to strap people in and take them on an adventure. I’ve realised, 20 years after the first EP and Lycanthropy [from 2002 and 2003 respectively], that the kind of beats I was making back then are cousins to the beats on [EP track] Nowhere Game.
Have you figured out the setlist yet? Any deep cuts coming back?
Patrick: Over the 10 years, it’s been interesting to look at end-of-year streaming stats to see what songs have become hits. For example, The Days [from 2011’s Lupercalia] is infinitely more played than The Magic Position or [2009’s] Hard Times because of that movie God’s Own Country. I’ve seen now what people consider to be the hits, so I’m going to be putting them through The Night Safari filter. At the moment I’m creating a family tree of songs and seeing what really belongs in this era – then I’ll be reprogramming them for 2023!
The tour kicks off in Cardiff: was that intentional or more a result of how logistics fell?
Patrick: I specifically chose Cardiff because the most memorable tours have always started in Cardiff. I remember with Lupercalia, it felt like the album was born in Cardiff live – everything was revealed for the first time in a very magical moment at Clwb Ifor Bach. So for superstition reasons, it’s good to start a tour in Cardiff! That’s why I chose it.
How do you see yourself as an artist now after being away for so long?
Patrick: I think a lot of that comes down to how you see yourself – I don’t think I’ve really worked that out just now. I’m aware that I have different expectations going back to work. I have no desire to be famous or make any decisions that lead me down that path: I have come back to work in order to make more work and I’ll go on tour so that I can continue to tour.
My obsession now is making all these things that I’ve been storing up in my head a reality. The kind of cult of personality that everything used to be maybe clouded my vision, and maybe clouded the way that other people experienced my work, so it’s not something I’m going to be chasing anymore. I’m still working that out – like, as I go on tour, I think it’s going to be a process of acclimatisation to being a public figure again, just by standing on stage and singing in front of your audience.
You’re definitely not sat at home being woken up by your cats and walking out to the sea before writing at your laptop and cooking by candlelight before going to bed. That’s my life, you know! Going for a run, maybe talking to the lady next door. I live in a very small seaside town now and life is very beautiful and calm, but I am the opposite of a public figure. I’m about to return to that and that’s when I really get to work it out. The audience is a mirror, and that’s how you get to see yourself and work out who you are.
Patrick Wolf, The Globe, Cardiff, Wed 19 Apr.
Tickets: £22.50. Info: here
The Night Safari EP is released on Fri 14 Apr via Apport. Info: here
words JOSHUA WILLIAMS
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