Patrick Wolf Continues to Tempt Us With Videos from His Upcoming Album

The US release of Lupercalia, Patrick Wolf's fifth studio album, isn't for another month, but the singer-songwriter has been steadily releasing videos for "The City," "Time of my Life," and now, "House":



Emily Manuel for Tiger Beatdown dissected some of theses new songs in a post titled, "Taking Liberties With Patrick Wolf ." It's definitely worth the full read, but here's an excerpt:

Where pop narratives more usually refer to obstacles like parents or spouses, Wolf takes the unusual tack of seeing the city itself as an antagonist to relationships. When I interviewed him recently for Billboard, he clarified that the song was a response to the recession, and seeing friends of his re-evaluate their relationships for financial reasons.

I'm really looking forward to the new record, but I could have easily written Patrick Wolf off as guilty pleasure -- except he's far too talented for that. What officially sold me on his magic was "Accident and Emergency,," a song that is by turns self-destructive and uplifting. Sick Mouthy  had another take on why a lot of people are reluctant to embrace Patrick Wolf as a serious artist:

Throughout all the music Patrick Wolf has released so far in his career (four albums with one due soon, and he’s not yet 28), there’s a musicality, a fluidity, a grace, and a melodicism to his songwriting that, for me, would transcend all the electronic splurges, the flamboyant showboating, the love of drama and poetry and passionate commitment to his art that might seem to others to be narcissism, if all those seeming pejoratives weren’t actually just as much a part of the attraction.

As a jaded, aging member of generation-x, his brand of pop/electronic/folk initially confused  me. There's a self-seriousness there, in addition to the flashiness,  that would really be off-putting if he weren't so good at what he does. And at times he does seem to be blatantly repurposing the sound of my generation's electronic pop, and doing it without a shred of irony. As someone who came of age with that music, and the backlash that followed it, that's just... weird. But I like it.