Breaking the mould a little here on Underoverground, I’m going to review a signed musician. And that’s partly because much as I love to review unsigned music, I don’t just want to seem to be concentrating on bands from my local music scene. We want bands from all over the UK. If you’d like me to review them here, please forward your MP3s to Jack@donowdo.com

Patrick Wolf is gradually getting noticed in the mainstream, including a recent appearance on The Charlotte Church Show  (an awful television programme - I’m sure you’re aware it exists but I’m just telling you, it really is awful) and Pop World among other TV shows.  Wolf’s success stems from his very distinctive “folk-tronica” which he seems to be slowly breaking away from.

Pogos in the Night....

The Magic Position is Patrick Wolf’s “pop effort,” an album that he states he would like “your granny and people who watch Eastenders” to listen to. For me, though, this isn’t what he’s achieved, other than with the title track “The Magic Position” which is poppy enough to have you pogoing through the night. The album is generally quite obscure. This isn’t a criticism of Patrick Wolf at all because it’s very good. Actually it’s borderline genius, but some of the tracks just don’t spell out “radio” on them, although they should. This is infinitely better than just about anything else in the charts at the moment.

The album kicks off with the solemn but somehow simultaneously quite upbeat “Overture”. Its brilliant, soaring melodies complete with beautiful enhancement of the violins over the top. You won’t know whether to dance or cry and already you’re set for the rest of the album.

Next track “The Magic Position” a very upbeat dancey number, bouncing up and down the major scale. This track may well end up being his big hit, and it should be, but and as brilliant as it is, it’s not really representative of the album, unlike his other singles. “Accident Emergency”, a similarly upbeat but perhaps slightly less happy-clappy song and the anthemic Bluebells culminating in the fantastic cry of “Ringing!” (Having seen Patrick Wolf live, I can tell you that he chooses to omit this brilliant climax in performance, he’s still very worth the watch, though)

Song birds

Cue pop music cameo. Marianne Faithfull duets with Patrick on “Magpie.” Bizarrely, Marianne provides the voice of the bird in the title here. I’m not entirely sure what Mr Wolf gets out of singing to perching birds but it’s a pretty ditty nonetheless. 

But I really don’t think this track or any other is just a filler here. The album feels consistent throughout. Patrick is clearly capable of escalating to pop-music stardom and I hope this review and others will help in that process.