Full Moon..

Patrick Wolf - The Magic Position
Grade: B+
The cover more or less says it all. All in red (hair included) Patrick Wolf straddles a plastic donkey on an empty carousel, and despite this goofy set-up fixed on his face is a dead serious stare. The ability to juxtapose between childish outrageousness and utter seriousness is something Patrick Wolf has mastered by his third album The Magic Position. While the instrumentation of this record frolics around with great pop sensibility, Wolf’s lyrics are more often than not complex and heavy. Tackling subjects such as war, unrequited love, religion, more war, and loss, The Magic Position shouldn’t be so easy to listen to (over and over), but it truly is. Wolf more or less aligns his fighting factions half way through the album, a point where the music as a whole gets smothered in melancholy, but by this point listeners will to follow the journey trumps the fear of being emotionally crushed. It’s an excursion that Wolf takes those who choose to stick along with through masterfully, the result of putting out a record that accentuates the best parts of his hit and miss discography for a perfectly blended experience.