"Songs about love are obviously the most common theme in pop music, but I wanted to approach it in a way that hadn't been done before. The title refers to the Lupercalia festival, which is the ancient fertility and love festival that happens around Valentine's Day. I strive to be original-- it's one of my biggest ambitions. There can be nothing worse sometimes than a soppy love record-- imagine if I'd called it To Love: Patrick Wolf!"
That's Patrick Wolf doing the heavy-lifting when it comes to pinpointing what went wrong with Lupercalia: It's clear he hasn't shaken off his artiste pretensions since the goth-folk of his early work, but ever since the career peak of 2005's shadowy song cycle Wind in the Wires, he seems to want pop stardom. And while the clash of those desires can lead to fascinating music, it rarely happens when the artist considers himself above pop music and its consumers. And unfortunately, much like he did on The Magic Position and The Bachelor, Wolf is operating like someone who doesn't trust his audience to think at his level, offering a subtly condescending record that leaves so little to the listener's imagination that it actually may as well have been called To Love: Patrick Wolf!
At first glance, Wolf's headfirst dive into new romantic pop seemed like a good move. As with "Accident & Emergency" or "The Magic Position", Wolf put a good step forward on this album's lead single: "The City" remains an insistently kicky piece of kitsch, its cheeseball horn charts and can-do lyrics about love transcending material possession successfully recalling 80s new pop. But like "The City"'s video-- Wolf frolicking on the Santa Monica pier with a bunch of Hollister ad types-- the rest of Lupercalia is self-aware in all but one crucial aspect, the ability to recognize just how blatantly it allows itself to lay it on so thick.
Far be it from me to deny someone the agency to make his "happy" record, but Wolf seems to feel as if self-consciousness grants him a license to go slumming in his most insipid songwriting impulses. The clincher from otherwise charming "House": "This is the greatest peace I've ever known/ Only love makes a house a home." Meanwhile, the lesson learned on "Together" is "and I can't do this alone/ But we can do this so much better together," the last word harmonized just so in case you didn't get the gist. Sure, it's awkward when he allows himself a little more poetic license on the string-choked "Slow Motion" ("before you I was living in a silverfish kitchen"), but at least it's a new way to make the same point.
