Regardless of his mythmaking and tireless efforts to project an otherworldly persona, Patrick Wolf still tends to write what he knows. One of the first of many bold proclamations on The Bachelor goes "in these hard times, we'll work harder," and whether you see him as an impish genius or a guy who'd be better off without an internet connection, you can't fault his commitment to craft-- all three of his previous records were meticulously imagined; all three sounded like the work of one man but rarely sounded like each other.
The Bachelor ups the ambition ante even higher, but it's just as as notable for displaying Wolf at his most interdependent, fitting in guest shots from Alec Empire and Tilda Swinton. Wolf's changes have been gradual: After the origin story of Lycanthropy, 2005's Wind in the Wires longed for pastoral escape but sounded like it was recorded in a remote hidey hole, all of which made the gushing, Cure-styled romance of The Magic Position a bona fide breakthrough. After that record's major keys and genuine human connections, The Bachelor isn't a hangover album so much as one on which Wolf picks up the morning paper and, without really breaching any specific topic, realizes that we're all in this world of shit together.
The Bachelor was initially conceived as a politically minded double-album entitled Battle, but Wolf's loves and depressions got the better of the initial plan-- either that, or he just realized that a politically minded double-album is a phenomenally bad idea. Nonetheless, the opening salvo of "Hard Times" and "Oblivion" are remnants of the aggressiveness Wolf set out for, the former recalling "The Libertine" in how it's prodded by a serrated, hooky string riff and the latter barreling forth with Wolf's most footloose electro-rhythms.
Most of The Bachelor's strengths sound borne out of arrangements rather than visceral or melodic thrills. For better or worse, that's likely been preventing any sort of real crossover for Wolf despite his acclaim-- while "Blackdown" culminates with a lovely Celtic hoedown, it takes about four minutes of tear-stained ivory tinkling to get there, and "The Sun Is Often Out" follows up with diminishing returns, struggling for a tune until a coda of choirboy chanting tries to make the preceding events sound like they were building towards something cathartic.
Even with all the momentum-sapping balladry, The Bachelor could still be considered Wolf's most physical album. Musical vigor backing worldly attempts at lyricism, however, is better left to Green Day (wait, no, that's not right)-- and here Wolf too often overstates things in search of some sort of populist truth. More worrying is that, despite all of the instrumental bric-a-brac dotting The Bachelor, Wolf leans on a choral mass during all the big moments-- a choir hopes for revolution towards the end of "Hard Times", exalts the listener to "rise up" during the coda of the otherwise understated "Damaris", repeats the title of the seriously Bono-fide arena raiser "Who Will?", and that's covering about half of it.
Wolf's always had an unsteady hand at hard rock, going down the supermassive black hole of fight music on "Battle" is at least a bizarre novelty that's kinda funny. As far as other bizarre novelties, unsurprisingly, "Tilda Swinton as 'The Voice of Hope'" is as ridiculous to hear as it is to type, triggering unfortunate flashbacks to horribly dated Age of Virtual Reality relics like Billy Idol's Cyberpunk and Kirstie Alley styling on the interludes to Prince's Symbol.
Strangely enough, Wolf's unclassifiable work to this point has managed to place him in a god-honest class of similarly minded Kate Bush acolytes-- but like St. Vincent and Bat For Lashes, there's the problem where stressing one's inner control freak can come at the expense of other freakiness. Or at least it can make any semblance of eccentricity feel micromanaged and forced, and Wolf lacks the former's humor or the latter's sultry songcraft to counterbalance it. Which admittedly sucks, because The Bachelor is still admirable in so many theoretical ways-- it's recorded almost flawlessly, and it appeals to the idea that an album is supposed to be an album of considered choices. Which is great, except that for all of the talk of Wolf being a chameleonic drama queen, oddball, or genius, The Bachelor most damningly lacks the charm attendant with any of those character descriptions, continuing Wolf's ability to please one's inner music critic, but too often ignoring any sort of pleasure principle.
