Pitchfork

Showering light over the darkness of his past work, Patrick Wolf is dropping the dour-bohemian routine. "Accident and Emergency" (based on the A and E chords) abandons his subdued, classically tinged preciousness for high-tech bombast: ringing martial fanfares and glitchy New Romanticism. Once steeped in intricacy, Wolf's work now radiates candor, cutting an as-the-crow-flies route to the heart and hips, thanks to a fresh stress on rhythm (that pop cornerstone) and naked sentiment. It redeems vapidities like "And just get yourself back into the ring/ Knock us out," Wolf's flamboyantly warped Bernard Sumner howl immersing every word in anthemic swagger. These lines, tilting against a din of trombones and sirens, glow with guilelessness, optimism and exuberance, and deal the mercy stroke to the old Gothic doom-and-gloom. It's a good look.