Patrick Wolf on new single ‘Limbo’ and “forward-facing” return: “If anything makes me shudder – it’s nostalgia”

nme.com:

Patrick Wolf has spoken to NME about his new single ‘Limbo’, and being “very forward-facing now” following a long-awaited return to music.

Listen to the track and read the full interview below.The sprawling “summer gothic road trip of a song” is the only cut on ‘Crying The Neck’ – Wolf’s first album in 13 years – about a romantic relationship.

He told NME that he was instead focused on a period of “anticipating loss” and experiencing “grief in slow motion”, in the wake of his mother’s cancer diagnosis and subsequent death.“There was so much survival and transference of survival energy to other people, that romance had no space in my writing,” Wolf explained.

The multi-instumentalist described his previous album, 2011’s ‘Lupercalia’, as a “dedication to one person”.“It was very much the romantic bubble, created by two people completely obsessed with each other,” he added. “I knew after that I was definitely going to have to explore other things.”However, he eventually picked up on the “narrative of interpersonal relationships” that spans his entire catalogue – which began when he was just 19-years-old.“I thought it would be a real shame not to address what happened at the end of ‘Lupercalia’, to the lovers and where they are now: in a car, arguing with each other,” Wolf told NME of ‘Limbo’. “I was thinking, ‘Do I take this off the record?