Patrick Wolf Unveils North American Tour Dates, New Single

Patrick Wolf has announced USA and Canadian live dates, his first visit stateside in twelve years to follow his UK and EU shows. Tickets are on sale Friday, March 21. He has also released a new single, an anthemic duet featuring Zola Jesus entitled ‘Limbo.’ The track is the second single from his much-anticipated new album Crying The Neck out June 13 via Apport/Virgin Music.

The USA and Canadian wing of the “Stations of The Sun Tour” will see Patrick returning to his very early Lycanthropy days of touring the states in the back of his Tennessee manager's car, yet this time driving himself coast to coast with a car full of instruments on what is set to be a solo roadtrip of an adventure, re-connecting to an audience not seen for a decade and meet those who’ve discovered his work in the meantime. The setlist will span both his best known work and the new album, acknowledging the twenty year anniversary of his much loved second album Wind in the Wires and exploring its relationship to Crying the Neck. Some nights of the tour will be seated and some will be standing, so Wolf is developing two shows for the tour, one to explore his more electronic work, conjuring the magic of his beat-driven setlists and seated evenings that will lend themselves more to the classical, electro-acoustic and folk roots of his work.

Commenting on the new single 'Limbo,' Patrick Wolf says: “I first started imagining a limbo - or purgatory - to set a song in after seeing a painting ‘The Scapegoat’ by William Holman Hunt in the Manchester art gallery. Years later on bleak lockdown weekly food drives to Bromley and the arguments and tensions in a relationship that brewed in the claustrophobia of the car made me want to begin writing a duet about the realism of a couple cutting off each other’s sentences and debating whether to persist with or escape each other. I reset the song to a strip of road in Thanet where I live with the couple now fugitive from the shadow of a country on the brink of war and with the painting from the Manchester gallery in my head, the land unfurled to the purgatory of the scapegoat and the rainbow, which I have our couple pulling up to as a roadside inn for the night in the song. So much of Crying The Neck is a series of responses to decay, death or loss, this song is the lovers’ response to a relationship in limbo and the only song on the album about a romantic relationship. I have adored Zola’s work since her first ‘Stridulum’ album and we have been pen friends since 2011. As I finished writing the song here by the quiet of the sea and seeing pictures of her own wilderness of woodland where she lives now in Wisconsin, I felt we were aligned somewhat in spirit at this point of our work. It was only her voice I imagined to duet with me and now I can’t imagine anyone else riding shotgun beside me on this our summer gothic road trip of a song.”

The aftermath of addiction, crisis, bankruptcy, recovery and survival shaped The Night Safari, Patrick Wolf’s 2023 return to music after ten years lost to creative impasse and personal upheaval. Now, with seventh studio album Crying The Neck, the 41-year-old has created a confident and hopeful record inspired by the transfiguring power of grief at the death of his mother, rehabilitation, local folklore and the East Kentish landscape.

Crying The Neck is the first new album in thirteen years and the first in a planned four album series, was written and recorded in the Kent coastal town of Ramsgate that Wolf now calls home. Here, he has a peaceful studio in the garden, the place in which he was able to find his voice again. In a period of rebuilding, Crying The Neck was entirely written, composed, produced and arranged by Wolf himself, with Brendan Cox brought in as co-producer and engineer in the last three years to help finish an album a decade in the making. 

Patrick Wolf is one of the most talented and idiosyncratic musicians of his generation, with a run of critically hailed albums, starting with Lycanthropy in 2003 to Lupercalia in 2011 which saw him incorporating everything from viola, celtic harp, dulcimer, baritone ukulele, piano, harpsichord, analog synthesizers and re-sampled field recordings in his music and collaborating with the likes of Marianne Faithfull, Tilda Swinton, Angelo Badalamenti and Patti Smith, among others. He most recently released The Night Safari EP two years ago was his first body of work in ten years and Crying The Neck is his first studio album in thirteen years. 

Live Dates: 

UK/EU

May 8 - Manchester, UK - Gorilla 

May 10 - Gateshead, UK - The Glasshouse 

May 11 - Glasgow, UK - St Luke’s 

May 13 - Leeds, UK - Brudenell Social Club 

May 15 - London, UK - HERE at Outernet 

May 16 - Bristol, UK - The Lantern 

May 20 - Cologne, DE - Gebaude 9 

May 21 - Hamburg, DE - Grunspan 

May 22 - Leipzig, DE - UT Connewitz 

May 23 - Berlin, DE - Heimathafen 

May 24 - Warsaw, PL - Niebo 

May 26 - Ghent, BE - Club Wintercircus 

May 27 - Amsterdam, NL - Tolhuistuin 

May 28 - Paris, FR - Trabendo 

May 29 - Zurich, CH - Dynamo 

May 31 - Milan - IT - Santeria Toscana 31 

June 1 - Bologna. IT - Locomotiv 

June 3  - Munich, DE - Ampere 

June 4  - Prague, CZ - Lucerna Music Bar 

June 6 - Vienna, AT - Theater Akzent

North America

September 17 - Vancouver, Canada - Fox Cabaret

September  20 - Seattle, WA - Woodlawn Hall

September  24 - Portland, OR - Mission Theatre

September 27 - San Francisco, CA - Regency Lodge 

October 7 - Los Angeles, CA - Lodge Room

October 9 - San Diego, CA - The Casbah

October 12 - Las Vegas, NV - The Griffin

October 16 - Salt Lake City, UT - Urban Lounge 

October 19 - Denver, CO - Bluebird Theatre

October 23 - Kansas City, MO - The Record Bar

October 25 - Davenport, IA - Raccoon Motel

October 28 - St Paul, MN - Amsterdam Hall

October 30 - Milwaukee, WI - X-Ray Arcade

November 3 - Ferndale (Detroit), MI - The Magic Bag

November 6 - Toronto, Canada - Longboat Hall

November 10 - Somerville, MA - Center of The Arts Armory

November 13 - New York, NY - Adler Hall

November 15- Philadelphia, PA - World Cage Live Lounge

November 19- Washington, DC - Pearl Street

Photo credit: Furmaan Ahmed