HE IS THE LAW

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

By popular demand, JUDGE POP is back from a lengthy patrol in the Cursed Earth, back to fight MUSIC CRIME on the mean streets of MEGA CITY POP. This week his legal scrutiny falls on PATRICK WOLF, who has risen to #1 on the Poptimists Listening Charts - but is he any good? The Judge's word is law - can you help guide him?

[Poll #956326]

Comments

stringing up indie HO HO HO etc.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

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.

Re: stringing up indie HO HO HO etc.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

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

I don't fancy P Wolf at all.

Re: stringing up indie HO HO HO etc.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

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.

Re: stringing up indie HO HO HO etc.

[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.