Patrick Wolf: Camp? Moi?

"There's no getting around the fact that Wolf's career to date has been marked by a certain huffiness. In recent years, he has variously announced his retirement from the music business on his website; threatened to emigrate from Britain because he was misunderstood not merely by the public but also by journalists – who appear to have incurred his wrath largely by showering him with praise of the Britain's-most-radical-innovative-and-creative-pop-star variety – and complained of homophobia on the part of both his former record label, which apparently wanted to market him as a "gay artist", and the media in general. He protested that the latter invariably append the adjective "flamboyant" to him, to which the outside observer might reasonably respond that, whether straight or gay, if you don't want to be called flamboyant, it's probably best not to appear on your album sleeve straddling a cartoon deer on a children's roundabout, dressed in a pair of scarlet culottes and metallic winklepickers, or indeed emerging from a patchwork tent into a dry-ice-laden woodland with one enormous gold epaulette and a balalaika..."

Alexis Petridis reviews Patrick Wolf's new album, Lupercalia, in The Guardian.