Patty Wolf's Best Video

The song still sounds a bit like something Wolf might write if he were commissioned to do a cut for a Take That album (yes we realise the sentiment comes from a genuine, personal and romantic place, but there's no denying that the chords and feel are a bit generically euphoric)... the VIDEO, however, is brilliant. There have been some embarrassingly shoddy Patrick Wolf videos, and some nearly incredible ones, but this is just... amazing. Lush, strange, good-humoured, narrative, aesthetically pleasing.

Well done.

Patrick Wolf's Album Art

Patrick clearly going through a dolly tennis whites phase. Now, a chronology:

Peace out

So we had a lovely e-mail from the fabulous remixers over at Buffetlibre (see their swizzles of "Love Kills" by Little Boots and the Sidechains remix of "Into the Groove" by you know who) who have been working on a project with Amnesty International for two years. Don't run a mile now you know it's got something to do with charity!

They've pulled in the talents of 180 artists from 50 countries (Ryuichi Sakamoto, Marc Almond, Patrick Wolf, 4hero, Dubstar, Tahiti 80, Dan Deacon, Micah P Hinson, Steve Wynn, The Antlers, Mogwai, Mexican Institute Of Sound, A Place To Bury Strangers, The Toxic Avenger, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, Stereo Total, Vive La Fète and Bart Davenport to name a few) to create a 'musical atlas of the world'. Pretty cool idea. Some of the pieces are vair interresant; Patrick Wolf (he literally is the pop star version of Marmite here on S&N) created a quite noice cover of Kate Bush's "Army Dreamers". An artist called Rockettothesky made a spine-tinglingly haunting cover of Bowie's "Heroes" - actual shivers. There seems like a wealth of beautiful music created by people literally all over the world - it's refreshing to see Iraqi-French artists included.

Anyway the entire compilation (180 songs!) is available for a small donation to Amnesty International over here and you can preview the tracks streaming first anyway.

Albums of the Year '09!

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's late! But 'better late than never' is what they say. So it's what we shall deliver. Here are our top 10 albums of '09. Twas a stellar year! Gushing and platitudes start here:

Blue Roses – Blue Roses
You may not have a clue who Yorkshire singer and multi-instrumentalist Blue Roses is, but if anybody can lay claim to Kate Bush’s ethereal, British folk throne it’s her. Her alternately wild, then almost classical voice and sound, contrasted with cut glass piano and spindly violin make for a debut album of authentic and sheer beauty.

Ellipse – Imogen Heap
We can’t think of another album we have waited as much for as this one. A mixed bag of emotions and moods like it’s predecessor, Ellipse brings us a song titled “Swoon” which somehow makes us actually swoon, a song named “First Train Home” which actually makes us want to go home and a track entitled “Canvas” which while having nothing to do with canvases, takes us to an Ibiza beach round about sunset, mojito in hand. Bliss.

Fever Ray – Fever Ray
Karin Dreijer Andersson has stated that this may be the first, last and only album she’ll release as solo witch doctor-cum-electro warrior Fever Ray. If it is, then what a rare and troubling treat. Ms. Andersson had always made music as beautiful as it was horrifying as one half of The Knife, but here she did it alone, and created a unique and wonderful soundscape in doing so.

Lungs – Florence + the Machine
We began the year with a poisonous dislike for Ms. Florence due to a certain “Kiss With a Fist” being a pile of utter shite, but that was easily mellowed into a blossoming, ever-growing (even to this day) affection for what a million and one people have already termed “the new Kate Bush”. Plucking away at our heart strings with the same ease she shows with her harp, Lungs can do no wrong. A genuine classic.

Music For Men – Gossip
While the year may have seen a rollercoaster in terms of how popular Gossip stand with your S&N writers, this record is undoubtedly a step in the right direction and completely their best work yet. Whoever’s idea it was to bring synthesisers, house pianos and just a tad of disco into the mix deserves a big sweaty motorboating on Ditto’s tits.

Rated R – Rihanna
Thought you were left reeling in shock at Rihanna’s transformation from just-another-R&B-label-puppet to world’s biggest and bestest popstar in 2007? Well how about when post-trauma and publicity whirlwind, she came out with an album brooding, dark, cohesive, challenging, clever and still unmistakeably her?

Speech Therapy – Speech Debelle
Say what you will about Speech Debelle, but any woman willing to rap so candidly about trouble and angst against a backdrop of baroque strings, shuffling cymbals, sugar-spun guitar and haunting piano without ever bragging about or glorifying gratuitous sex or violence was brave and brilliant indeed.

xx – The xx
Minimalist name, minimalist album. From reading their influences (Aaliyah, Mariah Carey, Ginuwine) you’d be forgiven to think they would be bordering on N-Dubz territory. Couldn’t be further apart. A sparse, sweeping landscape of blips and beeps, contrasted with two hauntingly beautiful and moving voices make for a prime revision soundtrack and the finest companion of 2009 to fall asleep with. That’s a compliment by the way.

The Bachelor – Patrick Wolf
There are those who would have you believe that it doesn’t matter what an artist does in their private life, if the music is good, it’s good. And there are others who would have you believe it’s impossible to separate an artist’s body of work from their lifestyle choices or shenanigans. If you’re going to enjoy Patrick Wolf’s work you’re going to have to be firmly in the former camp. Mr. Wolf has made it increasingly difficult to like him over the past year or so. Fabricating stories for attention, showing his bare bottom in seedy and unsexy S&M videos, throwing multiple hissy fits, and lobbing heavy electronic equipment at music professionals in a seeming attempt to create an air of rebellion. Erratic and confounding behaviour.

Despite this The Bachelor is Patrick Wolf’s most coherent, lush and exciting album. From the pulsing, fluttering strings on energetic “Hard Times” to the exotic and glittery sitar on “Theseus” there is delight and cloudless beauty on almost every track. Tilda Swinton’s spoken interjections have not been to everyone’s tastes, but are chilling and reminiscent of Kate Bush and Eliza Carthy’s husky raucous cameo is both exhilarating and wonderfully pitched. Wolf may have parted ways with his major label for this work, but you wouldn’t guess. Here the string arrangements are thicker, deeper and more evocative and the songwriting more inventive and sophisticated. You may not see eye to eye with Patrick, and increasingly even his fans do not, but you can’t argue with an album so perfectly wrought and aesthetically stunning.

Two Suns – Bat For Lashes
From the moment you are introduced to this record with blood-chilling, mesmerising verse and lead into a trail-blazing, hairs-standing-up-on-the-back-of-your-neck inducing rollercoaster ride through all manner of instruments and vocal contortions, you will be in love with Natasha Khan and her two suns. “Moon and Moon” is a three minute lump-in-throat moment through and through, “Siren Song” is desperately gorgeous and “Daniel” is officially the most fabulous 80s throwback of 2009 – and we all know 2009 was the year of 80s throwbacks. The video for “Pearl’s Dream” has to be one of the fiercest pieces of celluloid put to music of the decade – that blonde wig, that snarling wolf... ooh it always gets us going! – and “Sleep Alone” is leering, intimidating and gorgeous in all the right places.

There seems to be this magical crossing of wires between Khan’s ethereal elfin voice, the vast array of intricately played instruments utilised and the lyrical atmospheres effortlessly evoked with ease. Her 2006 debut Fur and Gold presented an undeniably interesting character – an artist with a bag of tricks which seemed to show promise for many further, better creations. Two Suns can only be a step in that impending process. In the wake of Kate Bush’s departure from our musical landscape (ignoring for a moment her recent fabulous “comeback”) we were presented with countless ‘quirky’ individuals clawing for a piece of her crown. Bat for Lashes is no Kate Bush – she seems to be in a league of her own. She has complete control of the music she creates and it seems to be coming from a genuine, entrancing place – she isn’t being ‘weird’ for the sake of being weird, Natasha Khan is a weaver of the most delicate tapestries, pieces of art which can take you from your desk chair or your train seat and push you through a tunnel of breathless emotions.

Two Suns is not only one of the finest albums of 2009 but of the decade, and we are pleased to say it seems the British public have recognised this with the success the album found upon release. We can only hope this provokes further, what we can only term as, genius from Bat for Lashes. We await eagerly.

Nice one...

Despite not being in our good books AT ALL, Patrick Wolf is still an undeniably good musician and responsible for, what some of us believe to be, one of the best albums of the year (and cruelly overlooked by the Mercury Prize). This cover up here is for "Damaris", his new single. A beautiful, genuinely epic (not in the shit indie band sense of the word) song, it's not an obvious single choice, but we guess Patrick Wolf is past all that 'chart friendly' and 'radio friendly' bullshit and just doing this for the fans. Well, that's good because the single artwork is gorgeous and there's sure to be some nice b-sides in the package as well.

There really is no excuse for this.

Patrick Wolf needs to sort his act out or even begrudgingly faithful fans, like this writer, who throughout all the puerile shit have stuck with him for THE MUSIC are going to start jumping ship. There's nothing 'cool' or 'rebellious' or 'revolutionary' or 'rock and roll' about throwing heavy objects at someone whose only crime would appear to be switching a PA off.

We thought about funny ways to spin this, but there's something disturbing about watching someone you thought you admired being... well... such a cunt.

Stuck In Our Head: "Theseus" - Patrick Wolf

Something folky and ethereal for a Monday. Tilda Swinton's spoken word introduction is pure essence of lovely and the sitar strains (we presume played by Patrick's BFFL, Bishi) are also whimsical and evocative. There's an interview with Patrick in the current issues of Attitude magazine and it just confirmed what we already know. You know... well it's not entirely positive. We'll put it that way. Nonetheless: it's stuck in our head.

Recommendations
"Tristan" - Patrick Wolf
"The Magic Position" - Patrick Wolf
"Never Seen Your Face" - Bishi

A 'trendy' Patrick Wolf video...

"Hard Times" is one of the very best songs on Patrick Wolf's rather genius new album, The Bachelor, so it's a pity, then, that the video is so obvious and 'art skewl'. We're not saying we could have done better, but the song sounds like a Dickensian pop smash hit (if you can imagine that) and thus if we had been in charge of directing the visualette, we would have had Patty leaping around in Victorian England, with a chorus of dancing orphans and prostitutes, wringing their hands at the blackened sky and skipping about the smog of London like shadowy sprites.

That's just us, though.

First impressions of the new Patty Wolf album

It is quite good!

We were worried it would be a frightful electronic mess BUT it's not. Thankfully Wolfy has kept the electronic elements to a minimum (they are tinges, not full on barrages) and sticks to what he does best: spooky, dark, orchestral, folky pop.

There are violins, pianos, AND TILDA SWINTON talking over bits. It's all rather gorge. It's probably just as well seeing as his last album (despite some amazing songs) seemed to have no theme other than "more commercialer than before".

Things do get grim at the end ("Battle" is terrible). But this is surprisingly good.

Well done.

(No more bottom shots, please).

Some more artworks...

It's a slow day in the world of music and we're working our way up to tackling the ridiculosity that was Lady GaGa's appearance on Jonathan Ross (it was a hot mess, really)... so here for your delectation are some new single artworks.

First we have the single artwork for "Vulture" by Patrick Wolf. Here it is below:

We don't know what to say about his awful hair but other than that it's quite nice. And at least it doesn't have his naked bottom or any leather straps in it, does it?

Next we finally have the single artwork for "The Girl and the Robot" by Röyksopp featuring Robyn. It won't change your life but it'll do, no?

Very Dali-esque, non? That's probably the point, isn't it.

COVERART WARZZZZ! Part #2

It's Patrick Wolf vs. Bat For Lashes (a.k.a. Natasha Kahn)! Let's get this violent battle on the road (oh dear).



Big overall epic sense of doom
Patrick: 8/10 (Camping trip turns apocalyptic)
Natasha: 8/10 (Candle shop turns out to lead to watery Narnia)

Ye Olde Font/Logo
Patrick: 6/10 (Amateurish font strangely looks ok)
Natasha: 5/10 (Too small and a bit H&M accessories logo)

Sense that artist is ridiculously important
Patrick: 9/10 (Cavalry soldier is secret sorcerer with flashy powers)
Natasha: 10/10 (Natasha Kahn is Mother Earth/Nature/Goddess)

Overall big sweeping impact
Patrick: 7/10 (Quite good, silly, epic artwork)
Natsha: 8/10 (Messy, but looks like no other artwork we've seen)

And the winner is...
Bat For Lashes!

*History in the making*

A whole universe of 'No'.

Oh god... where DO we begin.

Ok. Let us first start by saying that views on Patrick Wolf as a MUSICIAN are mixed here at Shiny & New. Some of us think he's put out some truly great stuff, and some of us just don't get it. WHICH IS FINE.

However, we think every single person who has ever come into contact with us can agree that as a PERSON, Patrick Wolf is... well... in the words of one of our lecturers "a bit of a cunt" (we're not even joking).

First of all there was that strange episode where he stormed off stage and said he was quitting music because his drummer was wasted... which is odd because we've heard on the grapevine that he likes a certain horsey intoxicant himself.

Then there was the whole business of whether or not he really wanted to be commercially successful. It seemed like he did. I mean it doesn't immediately mean that you make terrible music so he could have taken it and ran with it. But he didn't. Instead of employing charm, humour and good-naturedness, he often displayed grumpiness, surliness and humourlessness when being interviewed.

This did not enamour him to us/the public at ALL.

Then there was the whole Madonna thing where he claimed that he was beaten up by bodyguards at her concert for kissing his boyfriend. We can't verify this but we are fairly sure he was in fact beaten up somewhere completely different and had been drunkenly provoking someone. If he was indeed lying, to drum up some publicity then we are not only disappointed but also rather sickened.

Anyway Patrick Wolf (who once opened for Mika and then came home and bulletined on Myspace about how we should all stop buying shit pop music) doesn't seem to realise that being aloof and artishly cunty is not really the way forward... either that or he just doesn't care about shifting records anymore.

Thus we have his new video up above. To be fair... the song is quite good. It's not earth shatteringly good. It won't change your life. It's not as genius as some of his past stuff. But it's good.

The video, however, is full of shots of Patrick Wolf's bottom and some S&M fetish gear. We have no doubt that his glittery fanboys are rejoicing and having multiple wanks as we speak but all it said to us, was "ew".