Patrick Wolf: The Magic Position : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

At the tender age of twenty-three, London sex-god troubadour Patrick Wolf has gotten twice as good with every album, and he's already up to his third, The Magic Position. He's definitely a strange cat, with a mop of hair like bloody red wine and a six-foot-plus frame, overdubbing his acoustic guitar, string sections, toy piano and laptop samples into an extravagantly ridiculous style of romantic balladry. Marianne Faithfull lends her deliciously scary vocals to "Magpie"; Wolf croons like a little-boy-lost version of Nick Cave on "The Bluebell," "Overture" and "Augustine." It's probably a concept album, since every song is about grabbing some mysterious maiden by the hand and getting whisked into a private world together. But Wolf's joy is contagious ("Let me put you in the magic position/Let me put you in the major key"), and there's nothing remotely not awesome about him.