Crying the Neck ambitiously relaunches Patrick Wolf's career

After a decade-long recording hiatus, Patrick Wolf released the EP The Night Safari in April 2023. The mouth of misfortune conjured up on the song “Enter the Day” had spat him out at last and he landed in East Kent, just where he needed to be.

The London-born multi-instrumentalist, often pigeonholed as a folktronica artist, was still only 28 when his fifth LP, 2011’s Lupercalia, cracked the UK Top 40. “Things are looking up, up, up,” his sonorous voice swelled on the album closer “The Falcons”. What followed instead was a dozen fallow years that saw him battle alcohol and drug abuse, go bankrupt, get run over in Italy, and lose his mother to cancer.

Having sobered up during the pandemic, Wolf moved to the coastal town of Ramsgate, where a quiet life of swimming, seaside runs, gardening and the extensive exploration of the local folklore provided him with fresh inspiration. On Crying the Neck, written, produced and arranged by him, Wolf comes to terms with his misfortunes, his mother’s death in particular, and declares his love for East Kent and its lore.

Named after a ritual chant heard at the end of the harvest, the album is defined by its contrasts – dark and harrowing, yet also offering reassurance and hope. If you’re familiar with Wolf’s back catalogue, the record may not feel novel in that it has all the hallmarks of his earlier work: genre eclecticism, collaborations, literary lyrics, and vulnerability paired with a theatrical air. But now all that is on a larger scale. It’s almost as if, reignited by the new beginning, his passion has grown too intense for him to contain.

A case in point is the six-minute opener, “Reculver”. Starting out as a soft, piano-led ballad, it gets intense as soon as the strings come in and, with guitars and drums added, the pace steadily picks up. Around the two-minute mark the song gives you the tantalising promise of a club banger, only to slow down for a while before turning into a barn dance, eventually segueing into what would be a calming coda if it wasn’t for the 50-second outro of programmed synthesizer chugs. Phew! ‘Less is more’ is not the artistic motto Wolf lives by. In fact, his creative impulses unchecked, he occasionally overreaches.

That is not to say that the outcome as a whole is disappointing whenever he goes for a grand, expansive sound. Rather, the subtle, delicate parts are cancelled out by overblown ones. Take “Dies Irae”, an imaginary last conversation with his late mother. It shines brightest in its last ten seconds when, with the drum programming and all other instruments having fallen by the wayside, only his precious strings keep Wolf company as he sings “Take this moment / You’ll always have home in it / The time is here”. It’s a beautiful, heart-rending ending. What made him think that the song needed a chorus that sounds like Coldplay at Eurovision is a mystery.

All of Crying the Neck’s finest moments come when Wolf relies only on his voice and a chamber string ensemble, or even just some bells, as on “Song of the Scythe”. He soars on the swirling hymn “The Curfew Bell”, which ends with a gorgeous string passage that would make Schubert envious, and the captivating “Hymn of the Haar” has his full register on display. The way his baritone lifts on the lines “Crisis to crisis / Life needn’t be like this / Or must it and must I / Be oblivious nor ask why?” is magical.

Minimalism works best in the lyrics, too. The poignant “Stare at the past too long / To there you’ll disappear” on “Oozlum” and the stoic yet sceptical “The healing comes with admitting, I hear” on the layered “Jupiter” use only a few simple words. But Wolf often gets obscure and verbose. On “Hymn of the Haar” alone you have ‘restharrow’, ‘scansion’, ‘spindrift’, ‘blugloss’, ‘samphire’ and ‘plover’ – can you pick out the plants? While this is in keeping with the concept of paying tribute to his new-found home, it is at odds with the hackneyed moments such as the ohh-ohh-ohh-ohh choruses on “Dies Irae” and “Limbo”, a spirited but uneven collaboration with Zola Jesus.

That said, Wolf remains one of the most gifted and uncompromising artists of his generation. It’s great to have him back. A few weeks shy of his 42nd birthday, he’s at the peak of his powers, and Crying the Neck finds him getting into his stride again. If he reins in his excesses, he may be in full flight on its follow-up.