It would be pretty funny if returning art-rock hero Patrick Wolf got together with his fellow gothic conjurer Zola Jesus to yell about "how loooooow can you go!" That's not what's happening here. Wolf and Zola Jesus have indeed come together to release a new track called "Limbo," but it's not every elementary-school gym teacher's favorite party song. Instead, this "Limbo" is about purgatory, which probably isn't that surprising.
Soon, Patrick Wolf will release his long-awaited coemback album Crying The Neck. We've already heard lead single "Dies Irae," and now Wolf has also shared the vast, swirling Zola Jesus duet "Limbo." It's a clanging, operatic piano rager, and it sounds a bit like something that Elton John and Kate Bush might make together if they'd come up in the '00s and if they were all over millennial goth Tumblr. Zola Jesus has been relatively quiet since she released her 2022 album Arkhon, but she sounds tremendous here. On the subject of the song, Wolf has this to say:
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.
Below, check out "Limbo" and the dates for Patrick Wolf's just-announced North American tour.
TOUR DATES:
5/08 - Manchester, UK @ Gorilla
5/10 - Gateshead, UK @ The Glasshouse
5/11 - Glasgow, UK @ St Luke’s
5/13 - Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club
5/15 - London, UK @ HERE at Outernet
5/16 - Bristol, UK @ The Lantern
5/20 - Cologne, Germany @ Gebaude 9
5/21 - Hamburg, Germany @ Grunspan
5/22 - Leipzig, Germany @ UT Connewitz
5/23 - Berlin, Germany @ Heimathafen
5/24 - Warsaw, Poland @ Niebo
5/26 - Ghent, Belgium @ Club Wintercircus
5/27 - Amerstam, Netherlands @ Tolhuistuin
5/28 - Paris, France @ Trabendo
5/29 - Zurich, Switzerland @ Dynamo
5/31 - Milan, Italy @ Santeria Toscana 31
6/01 - Bologna, Italy @ Locomotiv
6/03 - Munich, Germany @ Ampere
6/04 - Prague, Czech Republic @ Lucerna Music Bar
6/06 - Vienna, Austria @ Theater Akzent
9/17 - Vancouver, BC @ Fox Cabaret
9/20 - Seattle, WA @ Woodlawn Hall
9/24 - Portland, OR @ Mission Theatre
9/27 - San Francisco, CA @ Regency Lodge
10/07 - Los Angeles, CA @ Lodge Room
10/09 - San Diego, CA @ The Casbah
10/12 - Las Vegas, NV @ The Griffin
10/16 - Salt Lake City, UT @ Urban Lounge
10/19 - Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theatre
10/23 - Kansas City, MO @ The Record Bar
10/25 - Davenport, IA @ Raccoon Motel
10/28 - St Paul, MN @ Amsterdam Hall
10/30 - Milwaukee, WI @ X-Ray Arcade
11/03 - Ferndale (Detroit), MI @ The Magic Bag
11/06 - Toronto, ON @ Longboat Hall
11/10 - Somerville, MA @ Center of The Arts Armory
11/13 - New York, NY @ Adler Hall
11/15 - Philadelphia, PA @ World Cafe Live Lounge
11/19 - Washington, DC @ Pearl Street
Crying The Neck is out 6/13 on Apport/Virgin Music.
