Just who is LONE WOLF aka Paul Marshall? In 2010 Bella Union introduced a storyteller dressed in black, pedaling ballads of murder on critically lauded album ‘The Devil and I’.
At this point there was barely a night that Marshall was not to be seen playing live, being asked personally to tour and perform with the likes of Wild Beasts, Bat For Lashes, St Vincent, John Grant, Broken Bells, Jose Gonzales and Radiohead’s Philip Selway to name a few. He was even chosen by Richard Thompson to perform a set at his Meltdown Festival.
His video for lead single ‘Keep Your Eyes on the Road’ was a homage to Peter Gabriel’s seminal ‘Sledgehammer’, and was both approved and complimented by Gabriel himself.
By 2012, the story started to take a different turn when Marshall parted ways with his label Bella Union, and decided to crowd fund his next record ‘The Lovers’. Gone were the acoustic guitars and huge grandiose soundscapes one had come to expect from ‘The Devil and I’, and a new synth led, art-pop sound was introduced. Also gone was the
narrative based blood soaked lyrics, in favour of what seemed to be a listener’s personal insight into Marshall’s sleep anxiety and depression.
Though the record gained significant critical acclaim, Marshall was barely to be seen on the live circuit, playing only two UK sell out shows at the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds, and The Lexington in London.
But as time went on, it was starting to seem that Marshall was becoming disenfranchised with the music industry, and even his own desire to create or perform. In one spit of bile on social media, he described his desire to make any new music as ‘terminally ill’. Marshall withdrew himself from the public eye, got married, went back into full time employment and took up the challenge of scoring his first motion picture, a film by Tunisian director Nejib Belkadhi entitled ‘Bastardo’.
The film went on to be selected for multiple respected film festivals worldwide including Toronto, Palm Springs, Milan
(where it won best picture), Abu Dhabi and many more. It seemed that Paul had opted for an alternative career in music.
In July 2014, out of the blue, Marshall posted a blog on his website speaking openly about how his diagnosed anxiety had finally gotten the better of him, and was now the thing that pretty much determined his decision making process. He spoke of locking himself away in his house and almost trying to shed the ‘musicians skin’ he had been living in.
He spoke about the strong feelings he had previously had about never releasing a record again but now due to a significant event in his life, the tables had turned and he now felt the need to make a new album more than ever.
Paul found out that his long time producer and band mate James Kenosha’s studio ‘The Lodge’ in Bridlington was soon to be no more. ‘The Lodge’ is a small converted barn in the middle of nowhere, and the location in which pretty much all of Paul’s material up to now has been recorded, and the one room in which Paul feels like the veil of anxiety becomes lifted.
Paul decided to lock himself in The Lodge for six days with only Kenosha and trumpet player David Wärmegård, as a swan song to the room in which so much of his music has been created, to see what sounds and personal lyrics would emerge. He specifically wanted ‘no studio trickery’ on this album and wanted a record that captured the very essence of performing in that room, most significantly the piano.
There are no acoustic or electric guitars on this album.
Every note on this album was recorded in that room.
Marshall performs every instrument, except the trumpets.
Most importantly, nothing is processed.
Paul did the most important thing to him, and that was to lock the door, wear his heart on his sleeve and make the record he wanted to make in The Lodge before it was no more.
So who is LONE WOLF? You are about to find out.
TRACK LISTING
01 Wilderness
02 Alligator
03 Crimes
04 Give Up
05 Mistakes
06 Mess
07 Taking Steps
08 Art Of Letting Go
09 Get Rough
10 Token Water
11 Pripyat
