Patrick Wolf Crying The Neck
Patrick Wolf's Crying The Neck reconvenes his mythic imagination with a clearer, more chastened voice, mapping Kentian psychogeography onto recovery and renewal. Critics agree the record balances chamber strings and spare piano against occasional bursts of electronica, and the consensus suggests a moving, if uneven, return: the album earned a 74.5/100 consensus score across 4 professional reviews.
Reviewers consistently praise the album's quieter, grief-tethered moments as its emotional core. “Dies Irae” and “Reculver” emerge repeatedly as standout tracks, with critics noting how they fold personal mourning into broader ritual and landscape. Critics also single out “Hymn of the Haar” and the high-heat single “Good Riddance” for their blend of bittersweet irony and catharsis, while chamber pieces such as “Song of the Scythe” and “The Curfew Bell” are highlighted for letting Wolf's baritone and strings breathe. Across reviews, themes of mourning and resurrection, recovery from addiction, and modern England criticism thread together to give the album a moral spine.
While some reviewers celebrate the record as a triumphant, emotionally exposed comeback, others flag occasional grandiosity and overblown choruses that undercut its intimacy. The critical consensus praises Wolf's capacity for wry humour and ritualized lyricism even as it calls for sharper restraint going forward. For readers wondering if Crying The Neck is worth listening to, the professional reviews point to a collection where the best songs - notably “Dies Irae”, “Reculver”, and “Hymn of the Haar” - make the album a rewarding, if imperfect, re-emergence in his catalog.
Critics' Top Tracks
The standout songs that made critics take notice
Good Riddance
1 mention
"she manages a perky as well as gorgeously floaty, cathartic, if still bittersweet final track - Good Riddance"— Song Bar
Math Equation
1 mention
"On Math Equation, for example: "You said I needed my own friends / So I found them / Then you fucked them.""— Song Bar
Amnesia
1 mention
"the more downbeat but rather beautifully sung opener Amnesia: "I’m an aperture /Of deleterious radicals / I know I tried / To reverse the damage.""— Song Bar
she manages a perky as well as gorgeously floaty, cathartic, if still bittersweet final track - Good Riddance
Track Ratings
How critics rated each track, relative to this album (0-100). Only tracks that made critics feel something are rated.
Reculver
Limbo (feat. Zola Jesus)
The Last of England
Jupiter
On Your Side
Oozlum
Dies Irae
The Curfew Bell
Lughnasa (feat. Serafina Steer)
Song of the Scythe
Better or Worse
Hymn of the Haar
Foreland
What Critics Are Saying
Deep insights from 4 critics who reviewed this album
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Critic's Take
Patrick Wolf's comeback on Crying The Neck is emphatic and emotionally exposed, opening with "irresistibly delicate piano chords" that set the tone. The review savours the duet “Limbo” with Zola Jesus and holds up “The Last Of England” as a concentrated example of Wolf's dark beauty and devastating poetry. Brendan Sharp writes plainly but vividly about recovery and transformation, noting lines like "feet don’t fail me now, don’t fail me again" as evidence of the album's raw honesty. For listeners searching for the best tracks on Crying The Neck and the best songs on Crying The Neck, “Limbo” and “The Last Of England” are singled out as the record's emotional high points.
Key Points
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The duet “Limbo” is the record's standout thanks to its joyful harmonies and emotional lift.
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The album's core strengths are its candid lyrics, vivid narrative of recovery, and moments of concentrated dark beauty like “The Last Of England”.
Themes
Critic's Take
Patrick Wolf's Crying The Neck is at once a hardscrabble elegy and a stubborn act of repair, and the best tracks - notably “Reculver” and “Dies Irae” - register that uneasy alchemy with crystalline force. Robert Davidson writes with the same mythic sweep that animates the record, dwelling on how “Reculver” unifies two decades of pain and salvation, while “Dies Irae” folds Wolf's fraught past into a life-affirming renewal. The album's triptych - led by “Limbo”, “The Last of England” and “Hymn of the Haar” - supplies its moral spine, Kent as ritual and frontline, and these are the best tracks on Crying The Neck because they balance local psychogeography with visceral personal reckonings. This is not a comeback that merely regurgitates former glories, but a measured, cathartic reconfiguration of Wolf's signature extremes into something eerily consoling.
Key Points
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The best song is "Dies Irae" because it crystallises renewal, personal grief, and Wolf's definitive musical hallmarks into a single, life-affirming track.
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The album's core strengths are its intertwining of Kentian landscape and ritual with intimate reckoning, producing a cathartic and erudite reinvention of Wolf's sound.
Themes
Critic's Take
After a decade away, Patrick Wolf returns with Crying the Neck, where the best songs - chiefly “Reculver” and “Dies Irae” - find him at his most affecting. Attila Peter hears Wolf at his most powerful when he pares back to voice and strings, as on “Song of the Scythe” and “The Curfew Bell”, and praises the moments of minimalism while chiding the overblown choruses. The album trades in contrast - dark and harrowing yet hopeful - and its finest tracks are those small, aching chamber pieces that let Wolf's baritone soar. If he can rein in his excesses, these best tracks suggest a reinvigorated songwriter ready for a stronger follow-up.
Key Points
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The best song moments come from pared-back arrangements of voice and strings, notably on "Dies Irae".
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The album’s core strength is its emotional honesty and chamber-like arrangements balanced against occasionally overblown production.