oneweekoneband:

Pumpkin Soup [The Patrick Wolf EP]

‘Pumpkin Soup’ (lyrics) is the odd song out - unlike anything we’ll hear from Patrick until at least Wind in the Wires. Even now, it feels unique in his discography. The rest of these songs are propelled forward, fleeing something dark in the past, or at least rushing towards an independent future; this mood becomes even more pronounced on Lycanthropy. The gentler songs that appear later in his career still tend to focus on the present or the future. ‘Pumpkin Soup’ is the one song by Patrick that can genuinely be described as nostalgic.

The tone is set from the first second: notes are haltingly played (practiced?) on the piano as waves rush in and out, and children outside laugh. The piano line asserts itself and is joined by cello, viola and violin. By the second line, Patrick is taken “back to another time of duffel coats and…late September evening sand.” There’s a tricky emotional narrative going on here. Patrick manages to simultaneously convey the beauty of these evenings – his mother’s baked apples and pumpkin soup, the glow of evening sun, riding a brand new bike down the hill – while still recognizing their transience.

The glow of last September’s sunset is, in Patrick’s present state of mind, a sign of oncoming troubles that hadn’t yet occurred. “Embrace the moment / ‘Cause everything changes and / All this will, too,” he declares. Patrick’s dream of the future may have been temporarily undone, but this is the lone glimpse of the home he is driven from by the black beating of his blood. His career from then until now is, as much as it is anything else, a document of his struggle to rediscover the peaceful moment of domesticity depicted here.