Patrick Wolf

Patrick Wolf plays the Mission Theater on Saturday, October 31. It's a single-bill night, so he's the only one on the program.

If you're not familiar with the name, Wolf is a London singer-songwriter who's been at this since he was a kid. He started experimenting with sound and four-track recording at 11 and joined the pop-art collective Minty at 14, which caught the attention of Fat Cat Records. He left home at 16 and formed Maison Crimineaux with his friend Fanny; the duo played a show in France attended by electronic maestro Kristian Robinson, who released Wolf's 2003 debut. He later studied composition at the Trinity College Music Conservatoire, and his 2004 album Lycanthropy reached number 39 in NME's top LPs of the year.

He's a multi-instrumentalist who plays viola, piano, dulcimer, harp, lyre, and tenor guitar, and that range shows up in the music—it's a mix of baroque, electronic, and pop. Over the years he's played in Patti Smith's band and collaborated with Florence Welch, Marianne Faithfull, and Angelo Badalamenti. After a decade of personal trial led him to step back from the industry, he released his seventh album, Crying the Neck, and toured North America driving himself coast to coast.

He's back now with The Tour of the Beast, and the set brings two new songs, "The Beast" and "The Laughing Dove." Doors open at 7 PM and the show starts at 8 PM at the Mission Theater, 1624 NW Glisan St.