The audience is mainly young, mainly skinny, mainly dressed in stripey tops. A couple of kids look like they’ve been let off the farm for the evening. Surely it’s harder to dress in that bizarre, oversized child’s woolly jumper and Wellington boots than it is to wear jeans and a t-shirt? It’s not quite as busy tonight as it was last week when my friends played their “jamenco” (”it’s somewhere between jazz� and flamenco!”) set, but Exeter’s Phoenix is still busy enough � maybe 140 people. On the day Wind In The Wires was released there were only 10 or so copies on display in the city’s record shops. I know because I counted.

Part of me wants to grab Patrick Wolf by the shoulders (not an easy task as he must be a good 8-10 inches taller than me) and shake some sense into him � “you may think the South West is some kind of sanctuary, some perfect idyll where there is space and air and freedom and you can be yourself, but you’re a posh London boy; if you go out dressed like that in a provincial town you’ll get battered and if you lived here rather than just used here then you’d understand that and you’d hate it too. Stop romanticising the frustrations in my life when I don’t romanticise yours.” Part of me wants to tell him to stop dressing like a Victorian urchin, to leave behind the affected shyness of his stage presence, to just play his fucking songs�

The smartly suited support act filter Roy Orbison through Scott Walker, Kurt Weil, David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti with Julee Cruise, The Smiths and Portishead, and end up in a gay cabaret located somewhere in Germany at the turn of the (next) century. It takes me a couple of songs to get into it, but the singer’s riveting presence and interplay with the guitarist soon wins me over. Bizarre, but great. Afterwards it’s a mild disappointment to see them wearing jeans, a 70s Brazil shirt (guitarist) and a hooded top (singer), but this is theatre, darling � you can be whoever you like onstage.

Onstage Patrick Wolf is the essence of the persona you would expect. Live he carries his songs with his voice and presence and remarkable talent and very little else � a piano that is too small for his uncomfortably long frame, a ukulele, a violin with a battered, moulting bow, and a drummer are the only accoutrements. That his songs, so reliant when recorded on electronic textures and complex arrangements, seem so strong when stripped to a bare essence is testament to his talent.

He plays a version of “Running Up That Hill”, confirming my suspicion of Kate Bush adulation, along with the b-sides of his current single, but most of the set is made up of Wind In The Wires material rather than tracks from Lycanthropy, suggesting that he sees himself as growing away from the fractiously dissonant roots of his first album � it’s almost like he’s following Tom Waits’ career arc in reverse, starting out wildly eccentric and becoming calmer as he goes. Of course, that’s going off just two records � he may well head further into bizarre, child-prodigy-wolfman-Victorian-urchin-laptop-violin-maestro territory over the next few years.

But for now, Patrick Wolf is as you might expect � stupidly talented, massively affected, and, for �6 a throw, insanely good value live. He’s supporting Bloc Party this autumn � I look forward to seeing him again.