Anyone who has seen the recent pictures of Patrick Wolf – his hair a shock of Andy Warhol blonde, his body encased in a bird of prey outfit – will agree when we say that he is one of the strangest and most exotically plumed creatures in pop’s menagerie. Crucially, however, there has always been substance to go with the style and The Bachelor is this Leigh Bowery of pop’s most substantial offering.
The concept of metamorphosis intrigues Wolf – his debut was titled Lycanthropy, after all – and The Bachelor’s eddying shifts in emotion and musical texture encapsulate this hunger for change. He’s moved away, somewhat, from the baroque balladry and glossy chamber pop of his last album, The Magic Position. Here those styles are replaced by a schizophrenic mix of Celtic folk – ‘Thickets’ and the title-track – and brain mangling industrial dance beats. The latter are courtesy of former Atari Teenage Riot man Alec Empire and reaches a ferocious electro crescendo on ‘Battle’.
Actress Tilda Swinton – endeared to Wolf, no doubt, for her gender-morphing lead role in the film adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando – acts as an occasional narrator as he sets out his romantic vision. Songs like ‘Vulture’ might titillate with their tales of satanic sex, but it is the quiver of lovelorn vulnerability on ‘Who Will?’ that truly resonates, as Wolf pleadingly wonders, “From the ashes of all the crashes/ Who will be the one?”

Key Track: ‘Who Will?’