Sundark and Riverlight is an acoustic rendering of 16 songs from Patrick Wolf's first 10 years as a singer/songwriter. It's divided into two sets of eight; Sundark contains the solitary material while Riverlight features, according to Wolf, "songs of hope and relationship." As a stylistic maverick who plays a number of instruments, the South London–bred Wolf selected three songs apiece from his five solo albums, plus "Bitten" from his 2011 EP Brumalia. He took them into Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios, where he sat at Gabriel's Bosendorfer grand piano and—often with gorgeous string arrangements—crafted a revision of his career and catalog. Traces of Scott Walker and Jacques Brel can be heard in the theatrical passions of "Paris," the Spanish guitar and romance of "Together," and the somber cadences of "Overture." The electricity and forward thrust in the rhythms that drove his previous albums, on glorious tunes such as "Hard Times" and "Vulture," are scraped away, leaving Wolf naked in the parlor (musically speaking, of course).