Lupercalia's Underrated Genius

I have a love/hate relationship with all things listical. I'm weirdly addicted to categorizing and cataloging the best of the best, but as the cries of "Hey, you left out my favorite (book, movie, album, insert-you-own-medium here) get louder, I tune out.

Yeah, I wasn't planning on counting down my favorite albums. For one thing, as I get older, more things fly under my radar. I'm okay with that, really. I'm okay with irrelevance in general. Plus I see nothing wrong with being a person in her late-thirties who has the taste of someone in her late thirties. The Keshas, the Katys and the Gucci Guccis mean nothing to me. However, there were a handful of good -- nay great -- records that held my short attention span for most of the year. Since it was one of my most anticipated, I'll start with Patrick Wolf's Lupercalia.

I've been pretty surprised at the lack of attention Lupercalia has gotten. Wolf's been a bit of a critic's darling in the past, but his latest record was pretty much ignored by critics and the music listening public at large. Admittedly, Patrick's music was a hard sell for me at first, and I stand by what I said earlier this year:

If you were to described Patrick Wolf's music to me -- a mix of electronic, pop, and folk paired with earnest, sometimes brutally earnest, lyrics and a predilection for the flotsam of 80s glam -- I'd say, "No thanks. I think I'll pass,"

But that's the beauty his music, Lupercalia in particular. It's redolent of the pop music I grew up with in the 80s, but without a trace of irony. In theory, I shouldn't like it. The shimmery pop/glam sound mixed with the earnest lyrics shouldn't work, but it does, perfectly.