Brightest Young Things

all photos: Dakota Fine

Seeing Patrick Wolf play live on Wednesday was a true pleasure. The big difference between this tour and the previous performance (reviewed here) are the songs. I feel like the new album adds the one element that was missing – finishing out an opus that felt slightly unbalanced (weighted towards the gentle, the acoustic) last time he came through town. Patrick while addressing the audience, seemed uncharacteristically nervous and self-censoring during his all-to-occasional forays into conversation. Patrick in song, however, was a force of nature – in perfect and effortless control of his vocal range, as well as the tempo of the audience. The set list was genius, and I felt, as I haven’t at many shows, that it was a play, a story – a journey that Mr. Wolf brought us on.

The Living Things

Patrick’s performance was the headliner on a large tour – three opening acts, including the Living Things, Plasticine, and Jaguar Love. I got to the venue a little late, so I missed Plasticine and Jaguar Love. My apologies to both bands. I got there right before the Living Things went on, so I grabbed an ESB and watched them take the stage. All clad in black, I definitely judged them as a style or fashion band, rather than one of substance. Each member had remarkable hair and they definitely coordinated their outfits. I guess you could call them the Fashion Horrors. Of course, the band is made up of three brothers, Lilian, Eve, and Bosh Berlin (I’m not making that up), and childhood friend Cory Becker. The first few songs took a while to gel, and I judged them early, writing them off. When the lead singer yelled out, “cheers to DC, land of Obama. Thank God Bush is gone. Peace and love across this beautiful city,” right before the second song, I thought, well, pandering. The audience seemed to enjoy them, and I jotted down some random associations – a bit Dandy Warhols, or a swampy Primal Scream (but without the frisson and willfulness of Bobby Gillespie) – or, more accurately – did they advertise for a Mick Jagger to sing, or did the singer advertise for the Rolling Stones to play the music?

Still, third song in, Lillian gave a rather heartfelt dedication to the troops and a shout out to everyone with a friend, a brother, a lover, in Iraq, and draped him self in a flag. A colonial flag. Odd, but nice touch. I started warming to them. He gave a shout out to their home town of St. Louis, though he decried that you can bring a gun to a bar there and said he wanted to move to DC where you can’t do that (yet). I think someone would have piped up with a discusion on DC gun laws, but Lillian started in on LA, saying, “you should be able to marry a boy or a girl or a hamster! Boo for Proposition 8!”

The next song was a little more towards the Bravery mixed in with guitar from the Chameleons and vocals from Red Lorry Yellow Lorry. I quite liked it. Dakota, our talented photographer, jokes that Lillian looks like a porn star. Dakota can be odd. The lead singer grabs people from the crowd during “Keep the Peace” and brings them on stage to dance, getting the whole crowd to sing along. Excellent stuff. Lillian follows this up by jumping into the audience for the next song to get people moving. Great songs.

The Artist Cometh

During the intermission between bands and the crowd kept getting bigger and more impatient, buzzing with anticipation. It moves on to the point of quite a bit of shouting. The natives are restless. Then, Patrick finally takes the stage. His hair is shocking – blond dyed again, with one side all long poodle tresses – sort of a Founding Father from the future. He’s wearing black pants with suspenders and white tails, with a frilly shirt that changes in degrees of open, from Wall Street to nude beach as the night goes on. Patrick comes on silently and heads straight for the piano to sing the opening from “The Messenger:”

I could make a home here in good time, but if good time is a gift not long to be mine, that’s fine – I’ll seize the day.

It’s a gentle opening note for the performance, and the band play gently on a full stand-up bass (with a bow), a rock violin, two keyboards and drums. The song ends with the beautiful line, “when all else fails remember always the open road,” and builds directly into an instrumental synth build, full of discordant notes (“Kriegspiel”). Patrick jumps to the center stage and then it is right into the crunching hard beats of “Vulture.” I note that there are some recorded backing vocals and sampled voices augmenting the hard attack of the song. The drummer plays like the devil, and (nice touch), Patrick modifies the opening lyrics – “I gave my head to Hollywood, my liver to DC, my youth to Tokyo, still, on with the show!” It’s fantastic live and the audience went bonkers, jumping with gleeful abandon, as he appends “DC’s vulture!” to the end of the song.

Patrick takes his jacket off and sits at the piano, launching into the gentle introduction of “Bluebells.” Egads, the song just builds and builds and the real drums add so much to filling out the electronica of the original. He delivers the vocals with swoony romance, singing, “I’m going nowhere fast,” and I instantly and overwhelmingly feel romantic and terribly alone in a crowd of couples. Then, they go into a quiet acoustic version of “Damaris,” singing poignantly, “I thought I was more than my father’s son,” and he pulls out his own, real violin to duet with the electric violin. The two violins play beautifully together, ending with “now I kiss, I kiss the earth.” It’s terribly sad and beautiful. Still, breathlessly galloping forward, they go straight into the gentle plucking and tapping the violin for percussion to start “Pigeon Song,” so gentle and so gorgeous. Patrick sings “London, why did you have to take my child away,” encouraging every couple in the crowd to cuddle and sway gently with the beauty, adding a despairing, “where is my home?” at the very end.

So, he’s already taken us up and down, and, it’s no surprise that the show needs 10,000 volts of power and amps turned up to 11. What else to do then strap on one of the most ridiculous guitars – a Gibson Flying V out of some bad ‘80s hair band and bursts into “Oblivion,” singing, “I hear you, but I’m not afraid of you – father, where’s my gun?” Sampled vocals and rock and roll bits fly all over the crowd – the song reminds me of New York City’s The Glass, but it comes across as slightly unconvincing after the powerfully emotion of the past few songs. The crowd loves it, though, and who am I to judge? Patrick barely pauses, shouting, “solo by name, solo by nature,” and the crowd goes into frenzy as they recognize the opening notes of fan-favorite “Tristan.” The compressed guitar adds a different angle to the album arrangement and Patrick indulges the crowd, as he stops and lets them sing the “and I am alive,” parts that punctuate the song. They gladly oblige Patrick, and turn the front area into a giant ruck. The song is unleashed more than played and the crowd relishes every nuance of every note.

Patrick has by now completely unbuttoned his shirt, so he buttons himself back up and played the title track from the new album, “The Bachelor,” which didn’t come off live terribly well, “who will feed them when I’m dead and gone?” Who, indeed? He calms it all back down with the piano intro to “Paris,” and brings the show to a hushed standstill. It’s a stunning finish to a great song, and he fills the now marked silence with some very welcome crowd banter. He laughs nervously, saying, “come on, I need some help here,” confusing the awed silence of a satisfied audience for indifference. “I haven’t played here for three years and, I’m playing this next song for Katty. I’m not speaking much tonight because I’m not good at speaking, sorry,” he explains, and the audience, all at once, gives a heartfelt (and unintentionally hilarious) “awwwwwww....” launching directly into “The Railway House.” Katty, I gathered from some research, is the lead singer to one of the opening acts that I missed, the Plasticines. That was sweet.

Patrick uses the ukulele for the intro to the next song, and, at first one or two members of the crowd holler – then the whole audience convulses with the pleasure of the opening notes to “The Libertine,” and we’re off. The live delivery is far darker and bass-drum driven than the album version. It’s very aggressive, and the audience is jumping up and down and clapping rhythmically in time. It’s a higher plateau of happiness and energy throughout the room, so, like the great showman he is, he takes that energy and focuses it down inon himself, taking his seat quietly and opening with the plaintive introduction to “Wind in the Wires,” stopping for a moment and apologizing, “you’ll have to bear with my ukulele – it’s like a Spanish guitar in that you have to change the strings and I haven’t changed these in three years,” sheepishly as he retunes it. Back to the song, which is wondrous, gorgeous, with an extended, quiet outro, and I decide I’ve had enough of being in the back.

Patrick addresses us once again, apologizing, “thank you so much for being so patient tonight and listening to me.” He explains that people keep thinking he’s up on stage getting sloshed, helpfully pointing out that he’s drinking Coca Cola, not a pint of vodka. “I’m a musician and I should stay sober!” he says by way of introducing “Who Will?” And it is a sober moment indeed – an emotional stunner, full of gentle, delicate emotion booming out into joy. He falls to his knees, singing gently, “who will, be the one, be the one?” as he sneakily peeks, coyly, out from under that ridiculous hair at the crowd, before standing up and belting it out – louder, louder, filling the room, singing, “who will, be the one, be the one?” and whipping us back into a frenzy. The energy level is straight back up to the top, as appropriate, because he follows straight into a joyous explosion of sound that is “Accident and Emergency.” It sounds, as does everything else they’ve played, beautiful live, and the audience is in his palm as he says, “brining out in the best in DC,” ending the song with a bracing repeat of the “whoo-hoos” that punctuate the song and a full-band outro. This is really cool.

Patrick sits back at the keyboards and says, “I’m so sorry, we’re all up here trying to survive the swine flue – you wouldn’t want to join us and get it with us,” which, of course, is patently untrue. All the boys and girls – gay or straight – would gladly contract swine flu from Patrick, and I’m eyeing the violinist. He starts with a gentle keyboard opening, which transforms into yet another barn-stormer, this time of the title track from the previous album, “The Magic Position.” This, indeed is fantastic, because I had miss-reported that they played it last time they were here (hey, I was reconstructing my review the next morning in an airport on my way to Brussels, so shut up). I feel oddly vindicated hearing it live, because it is just all energy and love and glorious keyboard runs and hand-claps. We’re becoming quite the sweaty mess, and it’s yet another DC shout out – replacing “let me put you in the major key” with “Washington, DC.” What is this, the Magnetic Fields?

Now they have to change out his guitar, again with an apology, “I’m so sorry, my Flying V broke, ooh, but aren’t you lovely,” he coos to the stage-hand, before apologizing to us all for “feeling like I’ve been through a blender, and thank you for letting me do this very public form of therapy.” We don’t know quite what he’s on about, but he continues to give a shout out to Wandsworth. He’s talking about a relative or something that should be in the crowd, but isn’t. He asks us all to pretend and shout out like we’re from Wandsworth, which he helpfully locates as “a prison that I can see from my bedroom.”

Still one more song in the regular set and it’s the next single from the latest album, “Hard Times.” It’s an absolute joy of a song to behold, a revolutionary manifesto that sounds great with the newer guitar. I really can’t describe the joy as the song transforms – he turns it on a dime when he delivers the line, “...resolution, show me some, revolution! This battle will be won!” It’s, I dunno – skyrockets. Love. The joy of overthrowing tyranny in your life, on your street, in your heart. A great moment.

He thanks us all, gives a shout out to all the opening bands, and walks off. We’re greedy tonight, and demand more. He obliges with a stunner from his very first EP, “A Boy Like Me,” all laptop glitches and aggression, his initial declaration of war with the world. It’s fantastic when the real drums beat in through the top, augmenting the laptop beats. I’m right up front, all knees and elbows, dancing with abandon. He finishes, and someone hands him an ostrich feather which he puts in his hair, smiling, embarrassed, touched, and goes off.

Amazingly, they let me backstage for a brief audience with Patrick, and we chatted briefly as he changed out from the show and relaxed. I feel like I’m talking to an opera singer after a great show, and I am genuinely charmed. What a great end to a perfect evening. Come back soon.

Previously in Live DC:

• 2/14: PHOTOS: Art Soiree's Love Masquerade
• 2/14: LiveDC: Sharon Van Etten/ Shearwater @ Black Cat
• 2/14: LiveDC: Die Antwoord @ 930 Club
• 2/13: LiveDC: George Clinton & The Parliament-Funkadelic @ 930 Club
• 2/13: LiveDC: Veronica Falls/ Brilliant Colors @ Black Cat
• 2/13: LIVE DC: Steve Aoki/ Datsik/ Alvin Risk @ Fillmore
• 2/13: LiveDC: The Darkness @ 930 Club
• 2/9: LiveDC: Theophilus London @ 930 Club
• 2/9: Best Weekend Bets
• 2/8: LiveDC: Kathleen Edwards @ 930 Club