Patrick Wolf, believe it or, does not consider himself to be at all flamboyant. Furthermore, he is not dramatic in the slightest, and says that when compared to most of his friends he is actually “quite boring and understated”.

I'll let you pause for a moment while you picture Patrick Wolf's friends.

Qualifying this rather surprising and charmingly deluded view of himself, the 27-year old singer / songwriter - known for being flamboyant, dramatic, overstated and certainly not boring - goes on to admit, “I guess you don't see yourself the way the world sees you though... I'm sure the rest of the world would have a laugh at that...” Yes Patrick. I'm sure they would.

One of those 'friends' of Patrick Wolf's who makes him seem so understated and demure is a certain Patti Smith. In town for a series of London live dates, the New York 'Godmother Of Punk' (we thought that was Siouxsie Sioux), “just called Patrick up”, I'm told, and asked him to collaborate right at the last minute. It's another surprise, and something that - having met and interviewed Wolf a couple of times - I didn't know, but Smith really is a good friend. Meeting the veteran singer a couple of years ago at The Dylan Thomas Festival, Patti has become a mentor to Wolf, helping him with his confidence and teaching him to believe 100 per cent in what he is doing. It's a friendship you might not expect and just another reminder that this is an artist who really is full of surprises.

Evidently, it's easy to go off on a tangent when you're talking to Patrick Wolf. The reason I'm talking to him at all, though, is the impending release of his fifth studio album, Lupercalia, in May, and he's not short of a thing or two to say about that either. Never embarking on a new project until he has something new to express, or has reached a new point in his life, it's no surprise that after the dark and brooding lament of 2009's epic ode to loneliness, The Bachelor, Wolf's latest offering is an all-guns-blazing celebration of love. How very understated!

“The Bachelor was of its own time,” I'm told. “In the writing and in the touring of a record I feel like I can let a certain thing out, it's like a bit of exorcism. So I only really feel like I can start the writing of a new album when it's time to say something new or find out something more about myself.

“I think during The Bachelor times I was very lonely. It kind of does what it says on the tin... I was very lonely and felt very at odds with the world and maybe at odds with myself and had to a do bit of soul searching and work through that loneliness and those feelings of aggression.”

Wolf tells me that in the aftermath of writing The Bachelor he went through some psychotherapy “just to be on the safe side” and to get himself back to a good place again. Consequently, his new album is all about leaving the dark place of The Bachelor behind and saying goodbye to not liking himself. It's a record that's concerned with feelings of peace with yourself and peace with the world, about finding love and exploring what love is. Everything that is the opposite of what went immediately before. Another exorcism, I suppose.

The lead single from the record, 'Time Of My Life', is a defiant, joyous expression of getting through struggle and finding happiness, but its tone retains all the brooding theatre and heavy drama of The Bachelor, reminding us that despite finding love Patrick Wolf was never going to revert to a lightweight, romantic sound...

“It's not particularly lighter. I realised that if you are writing about love or if you are writing about the positives in the world, it doesn't need to be light. I mean, you can be really serious about love, you can be really serious about being positive. When I wrote The Magic Position [2007] it was about feeling positive but I wasn't really being serious about it. It was about being young and jovial and not really understanding love that much, but this is a different relationship and a different me.”

It's true that despite being positive and celebratory, the new album does retain a serious and realistic outlook on love and life. Telling me that he's lost a lot of the innocence and sense of escapism that he embraced in his first two albums, Lycanthropy [2003] and Wind In The Wires [2005], these days Wolf's song-writing can't help but touch upon some of the harsh realities that affect his everyday life, such as the recession currently gripping his home city of London.

“I always try and be outward looking to a certain extent and living in central London right on the river and literally two minutes walk from the city of London, then I guess I just can't fail to notice it. When I'm stuck trying to get home from the studio and stuck in two hours of traffic because of various riots against the banks or tuition fees, then that affects me.

“I've chose to put myself in the middle of this and let it affect me, and so it definitely affects my work, in the same way that if I look out the other side of my house and see Ivy growing and a big garden filled with nature and that affects me too.

“About six or seven of my friends are homeless so it's gone from a time when I saw a lot of prosperity in friends' lives and in my life to a time that is a lot harder. That's one thing that has changed a lot...”

Speaking of change, it seem that when it comes to Patrick Wolf, while the artist's mood swings wildly from record to record - and it's part of the reason his work remains so compelling - there's a sense of rigid continuity running through everything he does. The Bachelor may have come from the darkest depths of his inner despair and Lupercalia may be his heart shouting from the rooftops about the joys of love, but throughout each record, be they odes to love or loss, it's that signature Patrick Wolf high drama that shines through. And it remains - despite what this much understated star might think - the fundamental backbone of what ties his work together...


Patrick Wolf live dates:

23 March @ Oran Mor, Glasgow
24 March @ Rescue Rooms, Nottingham
25 March @ O2 Academy, Birmingham
26 March @ Manchester, Academy
28 March @ Thekla, Bristol
29 March @ Koko, London