A Wolf in storyteller’s clothing

Midway through Patrick Wolf’s song “The Childcatcher,” a heavy-breathing electro vignette about being molested by the town bogeyman, Wolf took his shirt off, revealing a unicorn tattoo on his chest. It was a startling gesture for the 23-year-old English singer-songwriter. How could he write lines like “I’m gonna be your rite of passage” and still remember childhood as a time of unicorns?

But Wolf, an insanely talented multi-instrumentalist (violin, ukulele and theremin will get you started), has always hyper-stylized both adolescent joy and black-hearted myth.

The two are never that far apart for him anyhow, and his set Wednesday at the Troubadour dipped into candy-paint techno, brooding chamber suites and cackling folk-punk that showed pop music’s potential to transform an artist’s and listener’s sense of self.

Wolf’s 2007 major-label debut, “The Magic Position,” is a startling contrast from his older, significantly darker albums. But “Position’s” glitter-flecked and intricately imagined disco-pop is a good fit for him. Both “Get Lost” and the album’s title track are effervescent love songs, and Wolf took advantage of their looser instrumentation to strut, tease and roll on the floor as he bemoaned the high cost of seeing movies with his new amour, who could be male or female -- Wolf never entirely lets on in his lyrics.

But even more surprising is how well the songs Wolf wrote as a teenager have held up as he moves from outsider-artist into more pop terrain.

Wolf’s four-piece band drastically sped up the house-influenced “The Libertine,” turning its icy string melodies more pagan and folky.

Even “The Childcatcher,” which was eye-rollingly melodramatic on his 2003 debut, “Lycanthropy,” here seemed a blast of young rebellion, a ghost story told over flashlights at a sleepover.

Wolf is fundamentally a myth maker, and his joyful new tales make his others ring even more true.