Patrick Wolf

Tonight, there is pandemonium. The source of the uproar comes courtesy of a certain young man’s live performance. That man is Patrick Wolf – multi instrumentalist, musical visionary and master storyteller. Tonight, synthesizers sit adjacent to old-fashioned string instruments, while Patrick – who is armed with just his voice and piano – conducts the show, opening and closing proceedings to the sound of off-kilter pop.

Reports of Patrick’s performances on the last tour suggested that tonight’s gig would be rather shambolic, lacking coherence, altogether messy. However, this is Patrick Wolf you’re dealing with, and to base your conjectures of second-hand accounts would be naïve – they are in no way indicative of what type of show you’ll get.

Any notion that Patrick isn’t able to the transfer the magic he creates on his records to a live performance is diffused tonight, with more-than-successful performances of ‘The Child Catcher’ and the effervescent ‘A Boy Like Me’. Every note is hit, every chorus is sung with passion, and every dance is timed to perfection. However, it’s in Patrick’s new material where he really hits the mark. Forgetting the lacklustre ‘Accident And Emergency’, the majority of the new material suggests the future equals perfection; ‘The Magpie’ is evidence of this. Flamboyant, musically precocious and a joy to watch – he is worth the £12 ticket fee.

Patrick Wolf carries a certain magnetism that most artists can only dream of. David Bowie had it, Freddie Mercury had it, Thom Yorke wishes he had it. No-one escapes from his charm. Each and every audience member is encapsulated in his every word, his every movement, his every breath. It’s safe to say that Patrick Wolf is a truly wonderful performer and, dare I say it, one of the definitive artists of our time.

Photograph by Chiara, from Patrick Wolf's MySpace page, here.