Patrick Wolf

Nottingham Rescue Rooms on Sat 17th Feb 2007

Patrick Wolf, the impish South London minstrel and folktronic pioneer is getting his red hair dye everywhere. It’s on the keyboard, the ukulele and the microphone. Every time he grabs his cortex and contorts his head-top mop in accompaniment to a particularly heartfelt wail, a cloud of red puffs up above him. Backed by a four-piece band, together they’ve the sprightly bump of Puck and his pixies from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, executed with a hint of the play’s ramshackle Mechanicals.

But Wolf is no Bottom. This ridiculously early show (He starts 8pm, ends 9.30pm), catches a fair few short (this review misses out on his no doubt wonderful solo harp performance at the start), but every moment of it that is experienced is direct and mesmerising. With third album ‘The Magic Position’ imminent and already scooping up positive reviews left right and centre, the tone is upbeat and frivolous, a turn around from his solo shows earlier in the year. An upright bass bounces along, while his serene violin player springs about the stage like a leprechaun.


"While the world turns on, forever deepening its unsustainable and irredeemable consumer debt, Patrick Wolf sprinkles magic dust in our eyes."
The crowd are in awe. Frequently the location of audience passivity, tonight Rescue Rooms can’t show enough love, as every song is met with wild applause and Wolf-whistles (sorry, that was weak). As his musical meanders lead from the electro stomp of ‘Tristan’ to the string-disco monolith ‘The Libertine’, people jig, dance and sway with romantic vigour as if united in a maypole dance beneath the leaves of a secret garden.

But it’s the new material that surprises most. His past melancholia is tempered as album title track ‘The Magic Position’ adopts the post of sparkling pop iconicity that tugs the heart strings more effectively than any identikit valentine’s sentiment ever could.

By the time he wraps up with the ecstatically received, drum and bass informed ‘Boy Like Me’ there’s a sense that Patrick Wolf is remoulding himself from cult entity to aficionado treasure – a bright spark of talent and intrigue against the dull backdrop of boring day to day life.

As he casts a rainbow over the crowd and the electro-bass rumbles deep under the ground it elicits a moment of musical clarity. While the world turns on, forever deepening its unsustainable and irredeemable consumer debt, Patrick Wolf sprinkles magic dust in our eyes. But his aim is more than artistic escapism. His outstanding performance calls the words of Oscar Wilde to mind, “We may all be in the gutter, but some of us are looking to the stars”. His enchantment cuts through the concrete and clay, and general dismay, allowing for nature to still find a way.

article by: Alex Hoban

published: 21/02/2007 16:04



FUTURE GIGS


sorry, we currently have no gigs listed for this act.