“A Trajectory Into A Better Life” Clash Meets Patrick Wolf
Since the early 00’s, Patrick Wolf has been an artist of remarkable talent and a muse unlike the rest. His ability to create music as beautiful and as detailed as physical works of art is something that needs to be honoured, while his celebration and showcase of personal identity has paved the way for hundreds and thousands of artists following him.
2011 saw the release of Patrick Wolf’s ‘Lupercalia’, followed by 2012’s ‘Sundark And Riverlight’- an album full of acoustic re-records of some of Patrick’s previous work.
In 2013, Patrick headed out on tour with Patti Smith, playing celtic harp and viola for the influential artist before taking an extended break from music completely.
Since then, almost all had been quiet in terms of releasing new music for Patrick Wolf, with November 2022 finally breaking the silence as Patrick released ‘Enter The Day’, a track from his new EP: ‘The Night Safari’.
Clash writer Samantha Hall spoke to Patrick about all things ‘The Night Safari’ and what it’s like releasing new music after his break, as well as how addiction, loss and trauma has helped him become a stronger version of himself.
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So you took a break from music for a while. How does it feel getting back into the swing of things? Has it come naturally or has it been a little bit strange?
No, it really has come naturally. During my time away I was dreading things happening, like interviews and even being on social media and being the center of attention, all those things. I literally couldn’t think of anything worse for a long period of time, but as they come, it feels really natural, as if it’s like a muscle memory or just something that I did do from the age of 19 to 29. I’m a lot better; all the growing and development and healing and everything that happened in the ten years away, this all feels very easy at the moment.
I think it’s just like most things, generally: the fear of it is the only painful thing. When it actually happens, it’s actually quite enjoyable.
Do you feel like the music industry itself has changed a lot since you last released music?
Yeah. I think from my first album to the last album, I did see a constant. I think the nature of the music industry is a constantly shifting and changing thing that changes with the culture and the economy, and it does constantly change.
I’ve always held fast that if I can stand by the work I’m putting out and I haven’t done anything too embarrassing to compromise for publicity or anything like that, then I kind of just let the music industry change around me. You don’t change yourself for the music industry. So re-entering, I have very little engagement with it. I’ve got my management, I’ve got the work that I make and then I have the people on the phone in the social media. And so I’m as it is. It feels actually a bit gentler than, say the 2000’s where it was a pretty raucous kind of music industry.
This all feels quite polite, actually. There seems to be a lot more respect for boundaries.
So obviously with this EP, you’re releasing it on your own label. How did that come around?
Well, I decided to make an EP without a label or management or anything like that. I sold my flat in London and I had a little bit of money left over and I couldn’t really think what to do with it.
I was in that long period drifting, getting by on royalties. I didn’t have any massive need to come back to do Patrick Wolf apart from when the thrill of making things came back to me and the wonder of it, and slowly the joy of doing what I do came back. And then I realised it was going to be 20 years since the first EP had come out and I was like “okay, well, yeah, why not?”.
It felt a bit weird going into a studio to finish something which I had no infrastructure to release, no management to help find a label and all that stuff, but I really think if you make something in the dark, then it will come out into the light at some point. And that’s really what happened with this. I moved out to a really small little harbour town in east Kent, like there’s no cinemas, nothing, it’s a very small place, but it ended up being the place where I ended up finding my management halfway through making my EP, and fate and circumstance kind of intervened to get it released.
I had finished the work right up until choosing the front cover. The photography, everything, had been done without any exterior influence, and at that point, it was like, well, why would we bring a label in right now to disrupt anything that’s actually really pure? It’s been made because it’s wanted to be made and sometimes the label can come in and disrupt that. For this particular project, it just felt right to release it untouched, in a way.
I feel like it must be more of like a personal thing when you do it yourself as well, you can kind of do whatever you want?
Yeah I mean, I’ve learned a lot. I’ve re-entered the music industry with a lot of pretending I’m on an apprentice challenge, you know, and just really staying on top of this idea of owning a label. That’s very new to me because before I did have a label but, I didn’t really know who was running it.
I take it very seriously. I mean, I’m not averse to working with a label in the future, but maybe this kind of re-entrance is just a very gentle easing back into the of the music industry really.
So the EP itself consists of five tracks – what is it about and what’s the direction you’ve gone with it?
I think that if I had to try and sum it up into a couple of sentences, I would say: it’s a story about somebody that is in pain and doesn’t realise that other people want to help them. They will not ask for help and they think that they can solve their problems through magical thinking, through mythology, through pure determination. It’s an acknowledgment of that brave struggle of somebody thinking that they can save themselves. Then hopefully by the end of the EP it gives that person a sense of perspective that everything will be okay in the end.
That’s kind of what I realised after I made it. I think ‘End Of The Day’ is quite key to the whole thing because it’s a letter back to this person in distress and it says “I’m here, in the future. This balance and serenity and hope is in existence and it’s all here waiting for you”.
I really like how the beginning of the EP picks up from the end of ‘Lupercalia’. What’s the connection between these two releases?
I think that I only realised this when I finished it as well. I’m just working intuitively and then when it comes down to doing a track by track, I’m like “oh, I actually did that”.
The last song of ‘Lupercalia’ is ‘The Falcons’, and that’s where two people are basically having the Thelma and Louise moment where they’re holding hands and they’re probably going to kill each other because they love each other so much. And it’s that beautiful, optimistic, but quite dangerous romance that exists in Lupercalia and dare I say it, codependent even. And then ‘The Night Safari’ is basically saying, “okay, but now this love is not enough. It’s not fair on you to rely on our romance to solve my problems”. So there’s just a realisation that actually out of love, it’s separation that’s needed totake responsibility for your own problems.
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In the EP, a pretty prevalent topic is your journey with addiction, especially in ‘Dodona’. Can you tell me a little bit about the relevance of ‘Dodona’ and what this song means to you as someone who’s been through this really difficult time?
‘Dodona’ speaks to so many of my problems at the time. First of all, I believed that if I went on some epic journey and I said the right spell underneath an oak tree everything would be cured in the same way that leans into romance, saying “if our love is strong enough, then I can get better”. It’s really like admitting defeat and responsibility for your work and for your self-destruction, I guess.
It’s a person entering withdrawal, and it was this moment where I’d taken a one way ticket to visit the Oracle of Dodona, and I’d taken the plane to the island of Crete and then got on a ferry. I literally thought if I could be away from the city where I was using, then magically I’ll just be better. And then instead, what happened was just intense withdrawal and psychosis. This is a very candid song about maybe somebody entering the stages of withdrawal and the shock of the emotions that are rushing to you as you strive to disconnect from your addictive behavior, in the backdrop of the story of Dodona.
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What is the story of Dodona?
It’s an oracle site where people would go to visit to get an answer from nature. So, the prophets would sit underneath the oak tree, and they’d listen to the sound of the branches rustling in the wind, and you’d ask them some intense question like “will I ever marry?”, or “does this person love me?” And they would listen to nature, and the answer would come through them.
So in a way, this is kind of like a moment of putting your hands in the soil and asking the earth, asking nature to give you your life back, give you your health back, give you back your inner strength and serenity back.
I’m interested to know how it goes down with people because it feels like such a personal story. But I think hopefully I’ve written it in a way that it doesn’t feel like a personal diary entry. It speaks to people, hopefully reaches out to people that are feeling abused or trapped in addictive behavior. I wanted that feeling of claustrophobia and being beaten down.
You’ve been through a lot since taking a break from music. Do you believe that you’ve come out of the other side of this whole process as a stronger person?
Yes, infinitely so. A lot of the last ten years have been a long, slow falling apart and breakdown and then the other half a long and slow process of building back. Not only myself, but also my love for my work and my actual location in the world, the dream of living by the sea. I reached that point of having two cats and just making sure I had a life that I love living, putting actual roots down. I think whatever craziness that I’m going to experience by coming back into the music industry, I don’t think I’m at all shakeable in the way that I used to be.
I’m glad that you’re happy now.
Yeah, I am.
Which parts of your journey between the release of ‘Sundark And Riverlight’ and now do you think has had the most profound positive impact on your life? I know that’s a tough question.
PATRICK: Well, no, it’s actually quite sweet because it’s the the worst things that happen to you that are generally the best things that happen to you if you if you’re strong. If you process them correctly, then you’ll have great strength and standing from the disasters in life, you know. So, I really would say it was my decisions to the rock bottoms that led to my recovery and my sobriety. This has given me such a strong foundation as a writer, as a human being, that I wish that I had before I had gone into the music industry when I was 19. It would never have happened, but I’m so glad I’ve got it for this next chapter of my work.
I would say that when my mother died, that really closed a chapter of sadness in a way. She had been ill for such a long time, and there was so much audacity of hope that she would get better. And then when she passed, it just kind of seemed to come at a time where I was nearing the end of this ten years, and I was like, “okay well, we’ve had death, we’ve had bankruptcy, we’ve had addiction, we’ve had pretty much had everything apart from a natural disaster”. It just made me really feel like this is a period of time, and it’s time to start the next one now. It’s just a sense of being thankful for the awful things that happened, really. It kind of shoots you off in a trajectory into a better life.
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So in the EP, you play so many different instruments and you mentioned that it’s the first time for a while that you’ve recorded and played the violin and viola parts?
Yeah, it was. And if I think about this trajectory of my stardom, let’s say, from ‘Lycanthropy’ to ‘Wind In The Wires’ and ‘The Magic Position’, you’ve got an increasing set of budgets and increasing set of pressures and also shorter time scales. Between how albums are being made and what’s happening, there’s less and less time and space and silence to reach out to the viola that’s been in the cupboard as your childhood instrument and just stick with it. The relationship really broke down, I think, between ‘The Magic Position’ onwards, and you get used to doing it the same way. Like when I was 19 and 20, I passed my driving test, and I was so excited because I thought “I’m going to be able to drive down to Cornwall”. I wanted to buy a little 2CV and all this stuff. What happened was I just started to get driven everywhere. And then what happened is, I never handed in the piece of paper to get an actual license. So basically, this is a metaphor for my relationship with the viola as well. I just started getting driven everywhere on album three onwards. There wasn’t enough time to do my own string arrangements, so we’d hired a string arranger and they’re amazing things that happened with Joanna Bryce, and that’s great, but I also have a voice as a string arranger, you know, and but there was no time to to nurture it. Your feet sort of get taken off the ground and more people get involved and suddenly and there are amazing payoffs, like you’re suddenly playing with a 21 piece string orchestra, but I never touched my viola during that time.
After that I started working on ‘The Bachelor’ onwards, and I started to play with Patti Smith and her band and do these viola solos and just be just be a string player. And that was like living a parallel life to working with all these string sessions. I just knew I was recalibrating who I am as a musician, asking “what was my original template for this?”, well it was somebody that self produces and has a singular vision and is a string player. That was my original thing and I just completely lost contact with the instrument. Luckily, playing with Patti was a difference that brought me back in contact with it and then I just applied that to my own work. But it took a real mental gymnastics to go “oh, that thing I’m doing over there, I can do here”.
Now we’re entering rehearsals for the tour and I’ve got the band. It has a cello player in it and so I’m going to be playing a lot more strings with the cello player together. I’m going to make our own little string section, but I’m just applying the things that gave me joy in other places and applying it back into this job.
Are you looking forward to this upcoming tour?
Yeah, I am actually really looking forward to it. I’ve chosen, like, a musical set-up where we’re going to be able to bring life into some songs which I haven’t listened to for a long, long time. But to apply the kind of production of ‘The Night Safari’ and kind of re-work the older stuff.
For a long time, probably during ‘Sundark and Riverlight’ onwards, I don’t think I had played standing venues. It was always like playing in churches. It was kind of like the sit down era of church recitals. And so now none of these are seated venues and we’re going to bring the beat back and a sense of movement, hopefully. It’s going to feel quite strange, but hopefully it will register. I’ve got a rhythm section with a great percussionist and a live electronics person, so there’s going to be new life breathed into you. I feel like we’re going to be making music rather than just promoting music.
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‘The Night Safari’ is out now.
Words: Samantha Hall
Photo Credit: Kim Jacobsen-To