Patrick Wolf - The Magic Position (Loog)
5/5
By: Alex Lee Thomson
We're not sure what this 'magic position' is, how Patrick Wolf got there or why it's taken him three albums to reach it. We do know however that it's us, he alleges, who put him there, and that this is the most incredible album of 2007, or at very least among this already astounding year's best. This album has done more for Patrick's career than his other two combined. It seems that the whole country is up for some Paddy love and all our sexual-like moaning and groaning about this guy over the past few months hasn't been in vain. Yeah, we're probably about to lose him to the mainstream (see his upcoming appearance on the Charlotte Church show for proof) but if anybody deserves to be adored by the whole country, it's him, and it's for this album.
It opens on a huge Celtic collection of drizzling violins and tribal drums that make you remember that Larrikin Love were a really cool band and that you'd quite like to listen to them again. Although a good year behind Larrikins splendid caper, this is certainly more focused and has an influence that 'The Freedom Spark' didn't - it's overwhelmed with consuming imagery, profundity and acumen. You can hear the five years or so experience in the album's opener as it instantly connects with your heart as though to say, like all of Patrick's material does, "I'm here, and this is what I'm feeling".
This plays into the two peppy centrepieces of the album, 'The Magic Position' itself and 'Accident and Emergency'. The first of these, the albums incredible title track, is effortlessly one of Wolfs live highlights as he erotically arraigns the words at you, but sounds massive on the CD as well which blows away the cobwebs that his previous works, albeit works of art in their own right, may have left. It's a frivolous and playful credit to his audience, and if the live illustration is to be believed, is a vocalisation of his appreciation for putting him where he is... nice. Even if it's not a whimsical way of showing affection, it's so f**king champion, who cares? With an array of instruments clattering at each other while a communicable violin stride shadows you from the heated and luridly intoxicating numb-beats, who cares what the subject matter is?
'Accident and Emergency' marked the beginning stages of this album and introduced many people to the ways of the Wolf. It too symbolised the homecoming of our generations Bowie (and we're not just saying that because he's got red hair, though it is an exciting bonus for this Rockfeedback... no longer standing in the refuse of Mick Hucknall), and made us all bowl down our copies of 'The Man Who Sold The World' and play this instead. It's an electro-folk song that samples and serenades its way down a long and very tightly formed walkway of randomness and strategic perfection. The whole song contradicts itself from content to conception but thrives as a mischievous and intriguing introduction to yet another of the many facets that comprise the man we know and love, maybe too much in some of our cases, as Patrick Wolf.
The weirdness and unconventional paradise of this fizzles into a Wolf we know far better, a more sedate and haunted one who's beauty can be found is his voice as well as musical aptitude. 'Bluebells' comes from nowhere like a drunk driver on the Yorkshire Dales and though you start the song feeling a little pessimistic it develops, unravels and reveals itself as a huge and blasting anthem that climbs up your spine tickling every nerve you have a conscious knowledge of on the way. Ever growing, it spins and sneaks into a spot on example of why this album is gaining him attention. Patrick has bared his soul across all the tracks here but 'Bluebells' sounds particularly magnificent and prepares you, even if only in part, for the mindf**k of 'Magpie'. Marianne Faithful provides the 'voice of Magpie' and adds a delicate yet potent, really potent, sting to the song. Her voice drags Paddy's into the grave along with her own and takes the album soaring above any expectation with a gravity-and-ground breaking awe and unstable elegance.
If The Magic Position doesn't at least get nominated for the Mercury Prize, this Rockfeedbacker will dispense of the usual 'eating of the hat' debacle and damn right agree to attend the following Basement night wearing a dress and bop 'The Macarena' (in full knowledge that Tom Hannan does have a copy of 'The Macarena' to play). Such is our confidence in this album we're already wishing Patrick on his way as we've long since figured out that he's far finer than simple underground fame but should he continue to make work like this will find himself listed among ye ol' books of history for infinity as a pioneer of music. His mixture of the old and new, folk and urban, classic and retro, Celtic and electro, is inspiring and as the alarm bells ring through track ten and out into the vast expansion of the LP's close, you're left on a higher and happier plain of subsistence knowing this album exists.
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