Patrick Wolf | Hard Times
Patrick Wolf's "Hard Times" - how depression, falling in love, and 2008 recession became an electronic baroque rallying cry on a crowdfunded album.
Story Behind “Hard Times”
From Political Statement to Personal Reckoning
Patrick Wolf began work on what would become The Bachelor immediately after finishing his Magic Position tour. The initial concept was deliberately political—a sharp critique of contemporary systems and power structures. But touring can crack a person open. Somewhere between cities and stages, Wolf fell into depression, and the album’s focus shifted inward, becoming less about external enemies and more about internal struggles.
Then something unexpected happened. Before Wolf could fully explore this new emotional territory in the studio, he fell in love. The sudden arrival of romantic possibility entirely rewrote the album’s DNA. What began as political became personal. What became personal became expansive. Wolf found himself with so much material—love songs, protest songs, songs about resilience through adversity—that he eventually had to split the project into two releases: The Bachelor and later The Conqueror.
The timing was impossible to ignore. Wolf was recording through 2008 and into 2009, precisely when the financial crisis was devastating global economies. In interviews, he described “Hard Times” and The Bachelor broadly as capturing “love and optimism surviving through adversity and recession.” The song wasn’t just about personal struggle anymore; it was about collective endurance through a genuinely terrifying economic moment.
The Crowdfunded Gamble
By December 2008, Wolf had parted ways with Universal Records. Rather than panic about his situation, he did something radical: he announced plans to sell shares of the album itself through a crowdfunding website called Bandstocks. For £10, fans could invest in finishing the album’s production and become part-owners. Wolf explained it bluntly: “You almost become part of the record company, like a co-owner of the album.”
This wasn’t a marketing gimmick. Wolf genuinely needed capital to complete his vision. By involving fans in the financing, he turned vulnerability into community. The people who bought those shares weren’t just funding a record—they were co-creating something. When “Hard Times” eventually arrived, it carried that collaborative energy within it.
“Hard Times” Recording and Production Details
The Electronic Baroque Cathedral
“Hard Times” exists at the intersection of Patrick Wolf’s multiple musical personalities. His production is pure electronic pop energy—programmed beats, digital processing, immediate and urgent. But layered on top is a full orchestra: violin, ondes martenot (a theremin-like instrument that sounds genuinely unsettling), musical saw, and a gospel choir. It’s as if Wolf was trying to capture both the coldness of the financial crisis and the warmth of human defiance simultaneously.
The track featured contributions from Thomas White on guitar and Marcello Vig on drums, grounding the more experimental elements. Most crucially, the song employed multiple vocal arrangements—Wolf sang in different styles, from vulnerable confession to defiant proclamation. The production by Patrick Wolf (alongside additional production from Jonathan Shakhovskoy) kept the song propulsive without letting it become too comfortable.
The ondes martenot—that strange, theremin-adjacent instrument—provides an eerie, almost alien quality. It’s deeply unsettling in the best way, as if the instrument itself is expressing the discomfort of the moment Wolf was capturing.
A Church Organ Philosophy
Throughout The Bachelor, Wolf recorded organ parts at St. George’s Church in Brede, East Sussex. Using the actual church organ rather than sampling it added immense architectural weight. The space itself became part of the sound. The church’s reverb, its dimensions, its history—all of it became sonic material. This wasn’t a contemporary pop album pretending to have depth through production tricks. It was a record that understood the power of actual physical spaces, actual acoustic reality.
The album was mixed across multiple locations—Chairworks Studios in Castleford, Music Box in London, and The Yard in London—before final mastering at Abbey Road. This fragmentation across spaces reflected Wolf’s fragmented emotional state during writing: depression, love, economic uncertainty, creative rebirth. The final mix brought cohesion to these contradictions.
Notes About “Hard Times” by Patrick Wolf
Release Date: July 6, 2009 (single), June 1, 2009 (album)
Duration: 3:36
Genre: Electronic Pop / Baroque Pop / Alternative Rock
Album: The Bachelor (4th studio album, track 2)
Producer: Patrick Wolf, Jonathan Shakhovskoy (additional production)
Label: Nylon Records (US/Canada), Bloody Chamber Music
Chart Performance: Album peaked at #49 UK Albums Chart
Notable Details: Album financed through fan crowdfunding via Bandstocks; church organ recorded at St. George’s Church, Brede, East Sussex
Patrick Wolf “Hard Times” Era Band Details
Album Details
Album: The Bachelor
Release Date: June 1, 2009
Label: Bloody Chamber Music / Nylon Records
Producer: Patrick Wolf, Jonathan Shakhovskoy (co-producer, tracks 1-7, 10-12, 14)
Recording Location: Multiple studios 2008-2009: Parkgate Studios (Battle, Hastings); Olympic Studios (Barnes, London); The Hellish Vortex (Prenzlauberg, Berlin); Studio de La Reine (Paris); Assault and Battery Studios (London); The Dairy (Brixton, London); Bankside Lofts (SE1, London); Ken Thomas’s House (Arford); The Fritzl Dungeon (Curtain Road, London); St. George’s Church (Brede, East Sussex)
Mixed At: Chairworks Studios (Castleford), Music Box (London), The Yard (London)
Mastered At: Abbey Road (Geoff Pesche)
Album Concept: Originally conceived as double album “Battle”; split into two releases due to material abundance; recorded through 2008 financial crisis; themes of love, resilience, and optimism through adversity
Financing: Crowdfunded through Bandstocks website; fans purchased £10 shares, becoming part-owners
Band Members/Personnel
Patrick Wolf - Vocals, Electronics, Programmed By, Balalaika, Baritone Ukulele, Producer
Thomas White - Guitar
Marcello Vig - Drums
Thomas Bloch - Ondes Martenot
David Coulter - Saw (Musical Saw)
Victoria Sutherland - Violin
Gospel Choir - Aaron Sokell, Amy Stead, Chinique Blackwood, Jenny LaTouche, Patsy McKay, Waleed Isaacs (conductor Patsy McKay alongside Wolf)
Twelve-Piece String Ensemble - Debs White, Gillon Cameron, Louisa Aldridge, Sarah Button, Stephen Hussey, Victoria Sutherland (violins); Helen Rathbone, Ivan Hussey, Vicky Matthews (cellos) (conductor Fiona Brice)
Guest Musicians: Alec Empire (Atari Teenage Riot; co-producer “Vulture” and “Battle”), Tilda Swinton (vocals), Eliza Carthy (vocals, Irish Whistle), Matthew Herbert (co-producer “Who Will?”)
Engineer: Al Lawson, Catherine Marks, Dave Emery, Jonathan Krisp, Ken Thomas, Mark Allaway
Album Production Notes
Originally titled “Battle” after Sussex recording location; split into two albums (The Bachelor, later The Conqueror) to avoid overloading listeners
First album after parting with Universal Records; financed through fan investment via Bandstocks
Album concept shifted from initially political to incorporating depression during tour, then transformed by falling in love
Featured multiple co-producers: Jonathan Shakhovskoy (majority of album), Alec Empire (electronic-focused tracks), Matthew Herbert (experimental electronica track)
Album artwork mirrors first album, Lycanthropy (similar positioning and font)
Gospel choir and full orchestral elements throughout album; church organ central to sonic palette
Interesting Facts About “Hard Times”
The Album That Fans Actually Owned
Bandstocks was genuinely revolutionary for 2009. In an era before Kickstarter became ubiquitous, Patrick Wolf was essentially selling equity in his own creative work. He wasn’t just asking fans for money—he was making them stakeholders. Those who bought shares got a piece of the album’s ownership and future earnings. It transformed the relationship between artist and audience from transactional to collaborative.
Wolf’s statement about this approach was characteristically blunt and radical: listeners weren’t just buying a product, they were becoming “part of the record company, like a co-owner.” In today’s crowdfunding-saturated environment, this seems almost quaint. In 2009, it was genuinely transgressive—an artist publicly acknowledging that fans were essential to the survival of his work, not as a sentimental gesture but as literal financial fact.
Depression Transformed into Resilience
What’s remarkable about The Bachelor is that Wolf didn’t hide the depression that inspired it. He was touring, promoting his previous album, and found himself in genuine emotional freefall. Rather than pretending to be fine, he allowed that darkness to infuse the record. But then he fell in love, and suddenly the album wasn’t a document of despair—it became a document of how love and optimism survive through darkness.
“Hard Times” captures this exactly: it refuses to choose between acknowledging struggle and celebrating resilience. The music is urgent, propulsive, demanding action. But the arrangement also includes a gospel choir and orchestral strings—the human voices and instruments that have always represented hope and community in music. The song says: yes, times are hard. And we’re going to work harder. Both things can be true simultaneously.
The Economy as Emotional Context
Recording through the 2008 financial crisis meant The Bachelor couldn’t help but absorb collective anxiety. Wolf wasn’t writing in isolation—he was writing while watching governments fail, banks collapse, millions of people lose homes. His personal depression and falling in love weren’t separate from this economic moment; they existed inside it, complicated by it, shaped by it.
By the time The Bachelor was released in June 2009, the immediate panic had subsided into something worse: the knowledge that recovery would be long and painful, and that many people would never fully recover. “Hard Times” arrived into that specific moment—not triumphalism, but determination. Work harder. Keep going. Love each other.
Common Questions
Q: Why did Patrick Wolf crowdfund The Bachelor? A: Wolf had parted ways with Universal Records and needed capital to complete and produce the album. Rather than seeking a new label deal, he used Bandstocks to allow fans to invest £10 shares, becoming literal part-owners of the album and its revenue. It was a genuinely innovative (for 2009) approach to artist independence.
Q: What was The Bachelor originally supposed to be? A: The album was originally conceived as a double album titled “Battle,” named for the Sussex town where Wolf recorded much of the material. When Wolf announced the split into two albums (The Bachelor and The Conqueror), he explained he didn’t want to “overload people with too much”—the abundance of material written during the recording period necessitated separation.
Q: How did Patrick Wolf’s personal life influence “Hard Times”? A: The album was originally political, then shifted toward exploring Wolf’s depression during touring, then transformed entirely when he fell in love before entering the studio. “Hard Times” captures this complexity—it’s simultaneously a personal love song, a document of depression, and a political statement about collective resilience through economic crisis.
Q: Why record organ parts in a church rather than sampling them? A: Wolf recorded at St. George’s Church in Brede, East Sussex to use the actual church organ. The space, acoustics, and history of the church became part of the sound itself. This reflected Wolf’s philosophy that physical spaces carry emotional weight that can’t be replicated through digital sampling.
Q: What instruments are featured on “Hard Times”? A: The track combines electric pop production with baroque orchestration: vocals, electronics, guitar, drums, ondes martenot (a theremin-like instrument), musical saw, violin, and gospel choir. The contrast between electronic/contemporary and orchestral/classical elements mirrors the song’s themes.