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| Photo by Justė Urbonavičiūtė |
http://www.concertnews.be/makepdf.php?id=1906
Review: Patrick Wolf
Venue: Palladium, Riga (Latvia)
Date: 23/02/2013
The circus girl fell off her horse and now she’s paralysed. Patrick Wolf comes on a Palladium stage. Viola is playing, accordion is playing, harp is prepared, but his “guitar-friend” (ukulele) just died before the concert. Unlike the circus girl in the lyrics of “The Libertine” (the song that opens the concert), this misfortune doesn’t make Patrick Wolf paralysed. “This is gonna be a brand new show,” he says cheerfully. Throughout the concert London’s multifaceted musician proves it with his divine music, playful mood, sincere stories between the songs and his engaging character. It’s a fine, wintry evening of the February 23rd, and Patrick Wolf has stopped by Riga on his ten-year anniversary acoustic world tour.
Here he goes with “The Libertine” and runs the risk of being free; dressed all black, with a flowy shirt over black pants, his hair tied back, braided, and a headband decorating his head, his face beaming glitter. He sings vigorously, and then gets down on his knees and puts his hands together as if praying. “Bow down to your God,” he sings and bows down to the audience that sits comfortably in their seats to enjoy this theatrical ambiance.
He performs “Hard Times” and then sits at his grand piano. He takes us to the only one percent of his music that he has written when he is conscious about the moment whereas in the other 99% he doesn’t know what’s coming next and what has happened before. It’s the song “House” that immediately makes him think of London, his birth town, big bells ringing as he was born opposite the Big Ben. In that nostalgia, he remembers his obsession with Mrs Dalloway (a novel written by Virginia Woolf) whose biggest thrill was going out to buy flowers… during that obsession his song “London” was written. “[That’s why] after “House” I immediately thought of playing London,” he tells.
Every song he plays is accompanied by a story. The next one - “Overture” – tells the one about a school boy who gets beaten up. “[At those times] I realized you have to love yourself before you love anyone else. It’s fundamental,” he says. “It’s about opening up when you have been told to repress, repress,” he adds and then continues with the song about a boy with a “heavy heart”.
Patrick Wolf moves swiftly from instrument to instrument. For the next song, he takes his harp, speaks about having spent three nights at Kensington Gardens and then with the strings of his harp he plays the powerful “Wind in the Wires”. As if having gained courage for life, he leaves his home and London in the repertoire. He has reached the age of 18 when it’s time for escape. Paris is the place for that. He shares his fake modeling experience there. But now he is in Riga, inspired by the postcards, traditional plates and bowls, necklaces that Latvian fans have left for him in the backstage. He asks the audience now to teach him some Latvian and having learnt “I love you, Riga” he performs “Paris”.
“What shall we do now?” he openly asks as he rolls up his pants “to make him feel better”. He now looks like a humble boy (perhaps like Oliver Twist?), a wanderer in life and a wanderer between his own songs. He asks if there are any requests in the audience. It gets decided for “This Weather” that he messes up in the middle of the song, then apologizes and starts over. He hasn’t planned the next song either. He comes up with that now. “It starts with B, ends with N and in the middle there’s T,” Patrick hints to his fellow musicians. “It’s Bitten.” The audience is quicker.
Patrick says he feels excited about having no fixed agenda. “That’s my rules,” he explains. Perhaps, that’s why his concerts are so magical and different from one another. In the next moment he has lost his bow. He is looking for it among the bunch of other music instruments on the stage. He finds it, grabs it and is left alone on the stage playing the sorrowful “Pigeon Song” on his violin. Then he calls back the accordionist for another sad song “The Sun is Often Out”. After that, Patrick takes us to the banks of the river Thames and tells about the moments when he has got up early with no people outside, just him sitting by the river, feeling excited about the falcons - “the most wonderful birds ever” as Patrick says. That is when he ends up writing his song called “The Falcons”. He performs it next.
The final accords are more disco-like. “I grew up in discos,” he says and plays “Bloodbeat” that organically grows into “The City”. “Riga, don’t look so sad,” he localizes the lyrics and keeps singing “It’s about that day we kissed up by…. “Where did you kiss?” he asks and replaces the original “Niagara Falls” with the “beach” requested by the audience.
Patrick Wolf now leaves the stage with an air kiss. The audience stands up. He and his fellow musicians return for the encore and end the concert with “The Magic Position”, one of Wolf’s most well known pieces. “This is a real dream,” Patrick says at the farewell and leaves. What remain now are the stage full of flowers, clapping hands and rejoicing hearts.
