A kung fu fighter in a disco

This particular choice of potential perp was prompted by the aforementioned appearance on the Last FM list which kind of baffled me since the one PW record I had heard, some long while ago now, was a precious runty squall.

So I checked out his new 'pop direction' via YouTube and heard "Accident And Emergency". IMAGINE MY SURPRISE to discover that he now sounds like LLOYD COLE circa "Brand New Friend"!!!111!

I still ticked against though but remain persuadable.

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katstevens.livejournal.com

I have never heard any Patrick Wolf but have no interest in seeking him out. It all sounds very INDIE.

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It was less indie than I was suspecting!

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Only if you consider the concept 'male Kate Bush' to be indie.

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Can Judge Pop's official historian remind me whether he actually has sent down any perps as yet? ISTR Lily Allen getting off with a caution.

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jeff-worrell.livejournal.com

Both Lily and The Puppinippettes narrowly escaped the 'cubes.

I have not heard any Wolf. To YouTube I go.

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poor showing from me too. i should have heard by now based on 'rule of 3' alone. hurrah for blind and wilfull ignoring.

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alexmacpherson.livejournal.com

Oh god people keep talking to me about Patrick Wolf. I was piqued enough* to ask his PR for the new album and god it's unlistenable - overblown but still ineffective and wimpy, and again I don't understand why people would inflict their voice on people if they can really really not sing!

The first three songs, anyway, I had to turn it off after that.

Also have other reasons for hating not just P Wolf but the entire scene he's a part of, mostly to do with having ended up too close to it (but not close enough that I give a flying fvck about the tedious gossip emanating from it!!!!).

*saw him compared to Rufus Wainwright, whom I love, quite a lot, comparisons TOTALLY offbase though (they are both gay and a bit flamboyant and quite lavish in their ambition and that's about it). Key diff is, Rufus can make me laugh, P Wolf is entirely humourless as far as I can hear.

(The last.fm poptimists group is a total disgrace, looking at the most popular acts! How do they calculate it anyway - by how many group members listen to Artist X per week, or by how many times Artist X is listened to across the group?)

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the number is the number of separate members who have played something by that artist

similarly with the tracklisting, the number of people who have played that track

it doesn't reflect how intensively anyone may have listened to an artist or track individually, just the number of people who have played it/them once

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This feature will probably guarantee PW another #1 spot!!

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PAVEMENT though. PAVEMENT.

i think i might abdicate as 'leader' in protest

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Clearly there is MUCH WORK to be done in Mega City Pop.

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dubdobdee.livejournal.com

beneath the pavement THE BEACH

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blue-russian.livejournal.com

Cassie and The Field (okay, they're not pop either) rank on the tracks list.

The thing you need to resign yourself to is that most popular artists, and especially artists with longer histories, tend to chart higher.

Unfortunately not all the poptimists here are actually using last.fm (for various reasons).

Anyway, I like lots of music. The Lex was listening to classical last week, if I recall correctly! Even less Pop than Pavement ;)

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oh look, an inline preview of a patrick wolf track...

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Based on A&E I was expecting MORE ambition and lavishness - it seemed quite...lo-fi! I think I was expecting something more like Simon Warner or Thieves, to use two minor personal touchstones for flamboyant pop.

I didn't mind the voice really!

Definitely wimpy though - not always a bad thing.

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I am surprised people describe him as 'lavish' cus I always thought he was incredibly minimal. Hohum.

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jeff-worrell.livejournal.com

OK have now listened to three PW songs on youtube (didn't get to the end of the third one, actually), inc. two from his latest record. Not my thing at all. If Dr. T had used this guy as the stick with which to beat "indie pretending to be pop" yesterday, I would have argued with him far less.

To the isocubes wi' him! (Wolf, that is, not Alex)

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Whatever became of Simon Warner?

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PW is bi, rather than gay. Though he has also rather worryingly suggested that he might spend the rest of his life with a horse, which can't be good.

(deleted comment)

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blue-russian.livejournal.com

I had no idea he was a violin player. Hm.

I decided to listen to this last week just because everyone seems to be talking about it. On first, not-very-attentive pass, I found him much less indie than, say, Of Montreal. (What that means, I don't know.)

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Yeah, I often think if Of Montreal would just get themselves a decent recording studio, things would go so much better but I guess they're happy splashing around in whatever pool they're in.

To me he's very much less indie than a lot of things, namely Rufus Wainwright who I cannot stand listening to longer than about two minutes of. The perma-loathesome but occasionally possibly perceptive NME compared him to Bowie awhile back, which I thought was reasonably pertinent.

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NB last sentence there refers to Wolf not Wainwright.

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Patrick Wolf= complicated equation. I voted against inprisonment because 'Overture' on his new album is one of my favourite songs right this moment. It is a rather sexy discussion of the Iraq War, as far as I can tell* and pushes plenty of my CHRIST WHAT IS THIS NOISE AT THE START OF THE NEW BRIGHT EYES ALBUM, NOT EVEN I CAN ENJOY THAT musical buttons like the strange squelch-clunk-rattle percussion and the lightness of the verses in comparison to how aggressive he sounds, not to mention the oil lovers and enemies, turning the keys so desperately' line is ace in the Moggy Book Of Probably Misheard Lyrics. I also like the conventional method/unconventional application of classical instruments, 'specially the violin because I am an occasional fiddler myself and like the noise of stringed instruments a lot.

On t'other hand, he is a bit 'wtf' sometimes and he does have a tendency to sometimes WOBBLE ON FOR HOURS AND HOURS when someone should have kicked him out the studio and told him to go the hell home. However, he does not do this to as bad an extent as other violin-semi-popists like Final Fantasy and Emilie Autumn. He is also massively, incredibly better than Final Fantasy who is sometimes so unbearably knowing that I just want to smack the crap out of everyone who ever had anything to do with the thing. Emilie appears to have gone off down some mentalist industrial route (although have not listened to hurrahthankyouroyalmail her very newest, instrumental, album, which arrived today but something about the American McGee's Alice styling suggests this is not going to be a particular deviation from the cringier bits of 'Opheliac,' which will be bloody annoying if proved true because she has potential to do so much better things) also and other semi-classical business like Arcade Fire and Thee A Silver Mt. Zion Tra-La-La Band ('ffs' for short...) are far too busy making pseudo-innovation music or having really horrible vocalists to really enter onto Patrick's level/territory.

I'd place said level/territory in the direction of Britpop, actually, which I know will probably damn him further to anyone who doesn't like the principle of him in the first place, except that there's definitely something clever about layering strings in the way he does (singing+playing violin= very hard, singing+playing violin+screwing around with samplers and drum machines etc.=borderline impossible) and whilst I wouldn't say that ability is everything there is a certain level of musicianship which allows you to become a far better (well, more advanced, anyway) songwriter than, say, a boy with a guitar and three chords which to me absolves him of considerable amounts of the sort of 'well it's bloody rubbish isn't it and they can't write a tune' criticism that can easily be levelled at a lot of NME music/indie because everything in his songs is conscious and any unpleasantness is not through a lack of ability to do anything else.

The propulsion on his new album is a fantastic thing.

I fancy him quite a lot.

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alexmacpherson.livejournal.com

AAAAARGH you are so right about AWFUL AWFUL Final Fantasy!!!!!!

I don't fancy P Wolf at all.

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Mmm, I was briefly taken in by 'This Is The Dream Of (Win and Regine)' because that has quite a good tune and so does something else I can't remember that I've got by him, ('Many Lives>49' I think) not to mention I'm a technical geek when it comes to violinists so the layering instantly appealled but was quickly disenchanted by the whole affair. Listen to it while asleep now which probably says something.

He has a certain 'Dougie From McFly only less inappropriate' appeal.

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alexmacpherson.livejournal.com

Oh I can see how one might fancy Final Fantasy bloke - I don't but I can see it, unlike Patrick Wolf. I've only heard the newest FF album and it's just...so fussy, so bloodless, so in love with what it thinks it is.

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jel-bugle.livejournal.com

I am listening to a song on his Myspace page.

Nothing that special, kinda like Arcade Fire/other indie stuff.

Music for a young demographic.

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koganbot

Haven't heard, but voted in his favor to show solidarity with

poptasticuk.

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poptasticuk.livejournal.com

Aw thanks!

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justfanoe.livejournal.com

It is good that you voted this way because in MEGA CITY POP we respect civil liberties and assume innocence until proven guilty.

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jeff-worrell.livejournal.com

That statement makes no sense: we are the jury, voting whether to convict or not based on the evidence we have heard. One juror's vote in the jury room does not prejudice the presumption of innocence in any way!

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justfanoe.livejournal.com

Egad! My keen legal mind has been foiled again!

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poptasticuk.livejournal.com

It took me actual years to get into Patrick Wolf but now I have grown to love him. He seems to be a lovely person and his hair is after all inspired by Kate Bush, Geri Halliwell and Nicola Roberts.

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umlauts.livejournal.com

I am in favour, quite generally, but I don't think the new album is that good. And "Accident and Emergency" is not a very good single. The title track's a lot better. But the last album was spectacular, beguiling and downright odd, so he's an easy release, as it were.

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I got the work experience kid hooked on him this week. One of his comments was that one could very easily like one album and then find the others to be Not The Thing At All. I like that.

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skyecaptain.livejournal.com

Haven't heard Patrick Wolf in a long time, but when a friend of mine interviewed Patrick Wolf in 2004, I threw in a question about his animal trinkets. He likes making necklaces out of them. (Is his shtick still that he's a werewolf or something?)

He defended himself as "pop," too: "Pop music means popular music, right? When I make my communication with music, I would prefer it to reach as many people as possible. The things I write about are not fleeting relationships or everyday lust/romance/in the club/I love you songs. I much prefer the messages and emotions to resound in a huge number of people than just a few hidden underground scenes. I definitely consider myself a pop musician, but the difference between me and, say, someone like Christina Aguilera, is that I don't make the music to be popular. I make the music and then if it becomes popular, then that is the most amazing and challenging bonus."

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ms-bracken.livejournal.com

I just don't think I can listen to him and like him after that last sentence. It reminds me of Ocean Colour Scene / Hurricane #1 / HEAVY STEREO saying we just do what we do and if anyone else likes it well that's a bonus. Which I know is not really what he's saying, but the words are similar enough to make me do a little sick in my mouth

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They're similar enough that I immediately assumed he was teasing the interviewer!

I wonder if anyone actually did say it back in the day - see also "There's always been a dance element to our music".

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ms-bracken.livejournal.com

I'm pretty sure I read it in an NME interview in the mid nineties, said perfectly straight-faced, possibly by The Bluetones. Re : "dance element", I also remember very vividly that the latter said "Our new album is influenced just as much by the Wu-Tang Clan as it is by Bob Dylan". Turned out that was a lie.

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