Patrick Wolf Releases Better Or Worse EP Today
Crying The Neck Out Today via Apport / Virgin Music
USA/Canada Fall Tour
August 18, 2025 - New York, NY: Following universal acclaim for his new album Crying The Neck, released in June, Patrick Wolf announces the release of the 6-track Better Or Worse EP, available today via Apport / Virgin Music. The EP houses new versions, re-imaginings and remixes of 'Better Or Worse' alongside two new tracks: 'Hymne D’Étranger', the first French language song Wolf has written, and 'She Didn’t Dance, a cover of the Irish folk song. To accompany today’s announcement Wolf is sharing 'Mejora O Empeorar', a new production and Spanish language version of 'Better Or Worse'.
Listen to 'Mejor O Empeorar' On YouTube:
Commentating on the EP Wolf says: “Better or Worse is a short, but as powerful as I could write, little anthem of empowerment and healing that I began writing on my mountain dulcimer for my best friend who was going through a brutal divorce and lost her mother to cancer three years after I lost mine. The writing turned into advice from both our mothers in the end. All the folklore of the east Kent tradition of The Hooden Horse and its metaphor of resurrection sits as the core mythology of the song. Spanish is a language I’ve always adored listening to in music and speaking since I was a teenager when I first learnt it, I've got my own tutor now to get to the place I would love with speaking and singing. For my birthday this summer I went on an art mission to visit the work of the painter and poet Jose Moreno Villa in Malaga and “Better or Worse” was on my mind the whole journey, so much so that I began translating it slowly over my stay. It was also my challenge while there to make my first dance alone and sober after reaching my five year recovery birthday, but generally for many nights out I was busy making notes on and falling in love with Spanish language dance and pop music production and songwriting, so my new translation and re-production of Better or Worse ‘Mejora O Empeorar’ Is what I came home with, signed off by my tutor!”
Better Or Worse EP tracklist:
1. Better Or Worse
2. Hymne D'Étranger
3. She Didn't Dance
4. Mejora O Empeorar
5. Better or Worse (Instrumental)
6. Better or Worse (El Lobo remix)
Wolf returns to North America for the first time in thirteen years starting the tour in Vancouver on September 17 and wrapping up in Washington DC on November 19. Full dates below.
Acclaim for Crying The Neck
"A cleansing, literary, and intricate album, Crying the Neck not only feels like a rebirth for one of this century’s most unique artists, but perhaps the melancholy statement we need to meet these difficult times.”
SPIN
"Crying the Neck is a mystical and grand return for one of the great art-pop auteurs of the aughts, hopefully back to stay.”
The Needle Drop
“...he’s an incredibly compelling record maker and songwriter, a true world-builder in the finest fashion of one-man-studio-savants.”
Spectrum Culture
“Beautiful... The album swings between the tender and the bruised throughout, with Wolf’s voice going from a whisper to a soar, all resulting in a most welcome return for this most singular artist.” Uncut – 8/10
“A song cycle drawing a line between Rufus Wainwright maximalism and The Waterboys... Breathtaking.”
MOJO – 4 stars ****
“Epic comeback from the prince of orchestral art-pop. It’s as widescreen as anything he’s done.” Record Collector – 4 stars ****
“Monumental... genius... A cathartic, erudite, and complex work that serves as the beginning of a new chapter for Wolf.”
The Quietus (Album of the Week)
“A complex treatise on seasonal life in Britain... At the heart of it all is a hopeful study of overcoming grief, wrapped in the language of folkloric ritual.”
The Times – 4 stars ****
“Utterly sumptuous... Some of the prose here is as astounding as it is heartbreaking... It demands your attention”
God is in The TV – 9/10
“A ravishing song cycle... this is a bold, inventive and life-affirming return.”
The Sun – 4 stars ****
“An album of startling beauty... A glorious return from one of our most distinctive artists.”
MusicOMH – 4 stars **** (Album of the Week)
“Crying The Neck is fabulous and quite remarkable.”
Rock’n’Reel – 4 stars ****
“A riveting record rich with cathartic honesty, Crying The Neck marks a truly emphatic return.”
Clash
“Staggeringly beautiful... A collection of intensely personal songs detailing addiction and the loss of his mother while also looking outwards and making the personal political...
A remarkable collection which may be his best work to date.”
NARC – 9/10
“Glorious... One of the finest singers of the modern generation... This album is a really accomplished feat of studio brilliance and lovingly crafted melodies.”
Echoes and Dust
“Wolf remains one of the most gifted artists of his generation... he’s at the peak of his powers... Crying The Neck finds him getting into his stride again.”
The Line Of Best Fit
“Dramatic, emotionally charged, powerful chamber pop... this is inspirational and passionate work.” The Song Bar
The aftermath of addiction, crisis, bankruptcy, recovery and survival shaped The Night Safari, Patrick Wolf’s 2023 return to music after ten years lost to creative impasse and personal upheaval. Now, with seventh studio album Crying The Neck, the 41-year-old has created a confident and hopeful record inspired by the transfiguring power of grief at the death of his mother, rehabilitation, local folklore and the East Kentish landscape.
Crying The Neck, his first new album in thirteen years and the first in a planned four album series, was written and recorded in the Kent coastal town of Ramsgate that Wolf now calls home. Here, he has a peaceful studio in the garden, the place in which he was able to find his voice again. In a period of rebuilding, Crying The Neck was entirely written, composed, produced and arranged by Wolf himself, with Brendan Cox brought in as co-producer and engineer in the last three years to help finish an album a decade in the making.
The complexity of nationhood, personhood and grief that Crying The Neck embraces is summed up by the appearance on the album of a the recording of the writer Vita Sackville-West reading the line “faith, doubt, perplexity, grief, hope, despair”, from her poem ‘The Land’. “The quote is important because it’s acceptance and acknowledgement,” says Wolf. Crying The Neck finishes on the Foreland peninsula, looking out over the North Sea, reflecting on the transience of life, but also progress. “I wanted a song of experience at the end, a preparation for a shift into a more urgent mortality,” Wolf explains. “I do feel like I have a certain amount of time left, to do the work that I want to do, and a certain amount of time left to not do the work as well, and to live.”
About Patrick Wolf:
Patrick Wolf is a visionary singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist whose songs inhabit a world between the mythic and the deeply personal. Emerging with his debut Lycanthropy (2003), he quickly established himself as an artist of rare originality, blending folk, electronic, and classical influences into a sound entirely his own. Albums such as Wind in the Wires (2005) and The Magic Position (2007) showcased his gift for marrying emotional candor with sweeping, often orchestral arrangements. Renowned for his striking stage presence and ever-evolving aesthetic, Wolf has built a career on constant reinvention and remains one of the most distinctive voices of his generation.
Live Dates:
September 17 - Vancouver, Canada - Fox Cabaret
September 20 - Seattle, WA - Woodlawn Hall
September 24 - Portland, OR - Mission Theatre
September 27 - San Francisco, CA - Regency Lodge
October 7 - Los Angeles, CA - Lodge Room
October 9 - San Diego, CA - The Casbah
October 12 - Las Vegas, NV - The Griffin
October 16 - Salt Lake City, UT - Urban Lounge
October 19 - Denver, CO - Bluebird Theatre
October 23 - Kansas City, MO - The Record Bar
October 25 - Davenport, IA - Raccoon Motel
October 28 - St Paul, MN - Amsterdam Hall
October 30 - Milwaukee, WI - X-Ray Arcade
November 1 - Chicago, IL - Gman Tavern
November 3 - Ferndale (Detroit), MI - The Magic Bag
November 6 - Toronto, Canada - Longboat Hall
November 10 - Somerville, MA - Center of The Arts Armory
November 13 - New York, NY - Adler Hall
November 15 - Philadelphia, PA - World Cage Live Lounge
November 19 - Washington, DC - Pearl Street
December 2 - Valencia, Spain – La Rambleta
December 3 - Madrid, Spain – Teatro Lara
Photo credit: Furmaan Ahmed
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