Bouncing between his piano and violin, Patrick Wolf is a vision. His chest lies naked under a shimmering gold cowl and when he shakes off its hood, his choirboy haircut, once as black and gothic as his music, is now a shade of strawberry shortcake-red. He looks less like a troubled troubadour than a Paris catwalk sensation; clearly, something has changed in Wolf's world.

Following the success of his debut album, 2003's elegiac Lycanthropy, Wolf escaped to clifftop isolation in Cornwall to make Wind in the Wires. Late-night introspection and natural imagery were combined within his potent imagination to create a powerful juxtaposition of styles - folk fused with crisp club beats - as Wolf conquered his demons.

Wolf's newest album, The Magic Position, sounds like a reward for all that hard work. His Morrissey-like vocals skip through the Motown-influenced title track, his feet do a little dance; it's clear that there is more going on here than a mere frivolous mood. Wolf is in love. "After all these years, you are at last opening," he asserts in Overture, backed by his trusty laptop and a cellist and violinist who shift uncomfortably to the theatrical anthem.

With his childlike nature, dark aspects and simmering intensity, Wolf is the Willy Wonka of pop. He sprinkles melancholy brass over the Pet Shop Boys pop of Accident & Emergency, and smothers The Childcatcher, a song exploring the abuse of innocence, in industrial drum'n'bass. Like Roald Dahl's uncomfortable hero, Wolf hides behind a showy eccentricity.

At Koko, he is resplendent in a fashionable leopardskin print top and red shorts. "This is for a boy that means a lot to me," he says, giggling as he charts the stimulus-seeking sentiments of A Boy Like Me. He keeps up the coy act for his second encore, Wind in the Wires, but it's his new sense of fun that Wolf really wears well.