Patrick Wolf

at the Zodiac 6th February, 2007

The changing audiences of four of the last five gigs that Patrick Wolf has played in Oxford tells the story of the shift in gig going audiences. The first show was a late afternoon show in 2003 at MOMA, just Patrick and a lot of malfunctioning equipment. Everything went wrong, but in the intimate audience of 40 odd, anything was fine. Patrick had a reputation for being arty and weird.

The next year Patrick played another Trailerpark, this time in the Cellar, Patrick and a laptop. With the instruments in working order, this was the show that grabbed my attention. However my memory of Patrick, even after this most recent performance, will be at Truck 2005, turning round the corner and seeing him perform a cover of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill.

With his third album, Patrick Wolf has moved on from the melancholy and minor keys. It was a shock at first to hear him sing so happily and positively. So it was with some trepidation, I watched his show. The most immediate change isn’t how the music has changed, but instead it’s how the audience has changed. Where in the past he attracted arty types, now he seems to be a popstar attracting a teenage audience. There were teenage girls singing along to his songs as if it was a McFly concert. That was weird. For me, Patrick Wolf’s songs are about isolation and a personal ownership of them. It was strange to hear a crowd singing them back just like any singalong song.

The other big problem was the sound. On the songs which were perfect for stomping and dancing, the beats were drowned out by the strings, and the Virginal that was used for all the piano parts just didn’t sound right with the rest of the instruments. Above all these problems there were still the signs to explain why Patrick Wolf is truly a unique artist of our time. By switching between all the different instruments, he was able to show off the variety of textures of sounds that most bands wouldn’t even think up. And his voice still sounds as great and rounded as ever.

The internet is probably a big factor in the changed audience. Now that music is so easily accessible, no doubt many more people have been able to get hold of Patrick’s music, but on the other hand I’d rather have that intimate, dark, closed in feeling of his music, rather than sharing it with everyone else.

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