Artist Rating: 84%
Peak Album Score: 23
Average Album Score: 22
Development Score: 6
- The only tangible change one could detect in the course of his career is a growing tendency to orchestrate and add pomp, which definitely counts for something.
Originality Score: 9
- It's easy to just write off Wainwright as another gay piano balladeer with a classical background (er, Elton John), but that'd be ignoring basically everything he ever did - find a way to blend pop hooks with antique styles of music and make them still come out sounding pretty modern and even salable. From incorporating Ravel's "Bolero" into a pop march to backing his sparse ballads with displays of piano virtuosity, nobody in the rock world did it quite like Rufus.
Personal Bias Score: 24
Rufus Wainwright (1998) - 88%
My first experience with Rufus Wainwright was extraordinarily similar to mine with Jeff Buckley: I had never bothered to listen to either on the grounds that they were just lame American Idol-types who got famous by covering "Hallelujah" (irony), and when I finally gave each a chance they completely blew me away from track one. I probably listened to "Foolish Love" a dozen times just that day, and it's still hard for me to listen to the rest of this album on account of just pressing 'back' at the end of the starter track. It is that good; my friend Ben, when I made him listen to it, described it as "Debussy writing a pop song and then deciding that he's Rodgers and Hammerstein halfway through"... and I can't really do any better than that! Fortunately, there are other goodies; the long and winding "Danny Boy" is loaded with great hooks, harmonies, and random French Horn farts, and "April Fools" is one of the catchiest little ditties ever. Unfortunately, for every superb track, there's a piano ballad or two that just fail to stick in my brain at all. Of course, they're pretty enough (often stunning, actually) while they're on, but it's annoying when I can hardly remember anything about this album after "April Fools" and before "Matinee Idol" ( an extremely entertaining polka-romp thing with a great chorus hook and lovely, varied instrumentation) and the closing "Imaginary Love", which brings it back home with a deceivingly cute ballad that grows its way into a furious waltz by the end. Wainwright is obviously insanely talented, but he needed to find a more consistent muse to throw together a true masterpiece.
- Highlights: "Foolish Love", "Danny Boy", "April Fools", "Matinee Idol", "Imaginary Love"
Poses (2001) - 90%
Though still weighed down by a series of monotonous, moody ballads (which are better independently than in sequence), Wainwright's second album is astonishingly even and, on repeated listens, reveals itself to be a bit better than its predecessor. Yes, the songs sound pretty similar, but the hooks reveal themselves eventually. "The Tower of Learning" has lovely escape note jumps in its verse melody, an awesome Classical-era-style bridge between verses, and a totally unexpected jump into modernity with a dance beat. The title track is strangely eerie ballad with some great chord changes and two really memorable chorus hooks. "Greek Song" is an unassuming little shuffle with wonderfully cute verse harmonies, and "Grey Gardens" has a great main melody running throughout, but the big highlight is, again, the opener. "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk" is the only song here that really compares to the greatness of "Foolish Love", and clearly Wainwright knew it: the song is reprised in full at the end of the album (and I like it so much that I actually don't mind at all). It's a lovely ditty with deceptively cutesy lyrics about Wainwright's addictions, a really great orchestrated bridge, and a whole lot of great melodies throughout. The reprise is pretty much the same with a different groove, but it's all good stuff anyway. Rufus doesn't write bad songs!
- Highlights: "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk", "Greek Song", "Poses", "The Tower of Learning", "Grey Gardens"
Want One (2003) - 91%
I really want this album to be better than it is! Every album Wainwright puts out seems to verge on being 'the big one' and doesn't quite get there. The first two songs are easily some the most impressive of his career thus far, with "Oh What a World" layering a lovely melody and a series of wry lines with cabaret and orchestral instrumentation until it just overwhelms the listener with interesting textures, and "I Don't Know What It Is" is one of the best piano-pop songs of his career. Want One manages to be Wainwright's most diverse listening experience yet, too, with "Movies of Myself" actually rocking out (sort of; thankfully it's also really good), "14th Street" sounding kind of like a mid-career John Lennon song (think "Mind Games" and "Woman Is the Nigger of the World"...but better). Oh, and "Go or Go Ahead" is the single most epic and impressive song of Wainwright's career, with a pretty chord progression underpinning a flurry of ethereal vocal harmonies and lovely melodies. Sadly, the album sort of slides into the typical confessional monotony towards the end (not that any of the songs are bad...), and fails to be the career-defining masterpiece it probably should have been. But it's still pretty dang good.
I really want this album to be better than it is! Every album Wainwright puts out seems to verge on being 'the big one' and doesn't quite get there. The first two songs are easily some the most impressive of his career thus far, with "Oh What a World" layering a lovely melody and a series of wry lines with cabaret and orchestral instrumentation until it just overwhelms the listener with interesting textures, and "I Don't Know What It Is" is one of the best piano-pop songs of his career. Want One manages to be Wainwright's most diverse listening experience yet, too, with "Movies of Myself" actually rocking out (sort of; thankfully it's also really good), "14th Street" sounding kind of like a mid-career John Lennon song (think "Mind Games" and "Woman Is the Nigger of the World"...but better). Oh, and "Go or Go Ahead" is the single most epic and impressive song of Wainwright's career, with a pretty chord progression underpinning a flurry of ethereal vocal harmonies and lovely melodies. Sadly, the album sort of slides into the typical confessional monotony towards the end (not that any of the songs are bad...), and fails to be the career-defining masterpiece it probably should have been. But it's still pretty dang good.
- Highlights: "Oh What a World", "I Don't Know What It Is", "Movies of Myself", "Go or Go Ahead", "14th Street", "Dinner at Eight"
Want Two (2004) - 91%
Apparently a collection of the "weird operatic stuff" from the sessions that spurred both this and Want One, Want Two is indeed a more diverse little bunch of tunes than its predecessor and, even if nothing here thrills me quite as much as the two opening tracks on its predecessor, the overall listening experience is fun (and not typically monotonous) enough to make up for it. That said, there are big highlights here: the opening "Agnus Dei" (one of the final sections of mass), Rufus' attempt at placing himself in the company of Bach and Mozart, is stunning, though the orchestration is more in the arabesque line of late-Romantic music than Baroque; "The One You Love" is a catchy rocker with a cool triplet-stuffed melody; "The Art Teacher" is a lovely piano ballad (with some cute wordplay: "He told me he liked Turner, and never have I turned since then") taking the perspective of a middle-aged woman reminiscing about her crush on her art teacher as a girl; and "Waiting for a Dream" is a sparse piano ballad with light orchestration and a whole lot of echo, carrying with it a really neat, near-psychedelic vibe. Elsewhere, the closing "Old Whore's Diet" is highly entertaining when it breaks into a sort of Arabian dance beat after two minutes and Rufus sings the whole lyric (nearly embarrassing lyric - "An old whore's diet gets me goin' in the morning") with a ridiculous deep woman's voice, and "Little Sister" is a lovely, Baroque-style (harpsichord-driven, too!) ode to Martha Wainwright (or rather, their childhood conflicts). If Rufus had compiled the best tracks from the two Want albums onto one disc, it would probably have been stellar, but oh well. I'm not complaining.
- Highlights: "Agnus Dei", "The One You Love", "The Art Teacher", "Waiting for a Dream"
Release the Stars (2007) - 90%
While it's hard to really criticize Wainwright for being consistently great five albums in a row, Release the Stars provokes more of a "oh, another one" response than anything else. The opening duo (as usual) is as good as anything the man has written: "Do I Disappoint You" is a tastefully-orchestrated slice of arabesque pop, and "Going to a Town" may be both the most bitter and catchiest song of his career. The usual monotony of balladry is surprisingly condensed, with only "Leaving for Paris No. 2" really boring me, and "Tiergarten" and "Not Ready to Love" falling in the category but still managing to be very pretty. Unfortunately, the album has some other lowlights: "Between My Legs" is a sort of barroom rocker, and it just doesn't work at all; and "Tulsa" is a total mess with nothing rhyming or making sense. Back on the upside, though, "Sanssouci" is a great pop-rocker with a neat lyrical theme that manages to be very particular to Wainwright without being annoyingly personal ("I'm tired of writing elegies to boredom"), and the title track is a delightful throwback gospel epic (choir and all!). Rufus certainly hasn't lost anything with this release - if anything, it's promising that the album's flaw isn't the same as always - but he has yet to figure out how to really nail it.
While it's hard to really criticize Wainwright for being consistently great five albums in a row, Release the Stars provokes more of a "oh, another one" response than anything else. The opening duo (as usual) is as good as anything the man has written: "Do I Disappoint You" is a tastefully-orchestrated slice of arabesque pop, and "Going to a Town" may be both the most bitter and catchiest song of his career. The usual monotony of balladry is surprisingly condensed, with only "Leaving for Paris No. 2" really boring me, and "Tiergarten" and "Not Ready to Love" falling in the category but still managing to be very pretty. Unfortunately, the album has some other lowlights: "Between My Legs" is a sort of barroom rocker, and it just doesn't work at all; and "Tulsa" is a total mess with nothing rhyming or making sense. Back on the upside, though, "Sanssouci" is a great pop-rocker with a neat lyrical theme that manages to be very particular to Wainwright without being annoyingly personal ("I'm tired of writing elegies to boredom"), and the title track is a delightful throwback gospel epic (choir and all!). Rufus certainly hasn't lost anything with this release - if anything, it's promising that the album's flaw isn't the same as always - but he has yet to figure out how to really nail it.
- Highlights: "Do I Disappoint You", "Going to a Town", "Slideshow", "Sanssouci"
All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu (2010) - 86%
Aha! This one's different! Wainwright strips the music down to solo piano and vocal, deciding that, after three albums of 'orchestral excess', the time had come to be intimate on record. Is it effective? Well, he's always been intimate behind the layers upon layers of instruments and harmonies, so the only real difference is the arrangement. Unfortunately, the sparsity highlights his seemingly unshakeable flaw: his style just gets boring before a whole album is up. Now, without the weight and extra melodies of orchestras and the like, the relative monotony of the songs starts to grate much more quickly. Certain tracks here still shine - the opening "Who Are You New York?", despite being a list of places, is melodically lovely (and has a great arpeggiated piano part underneath); "Martha" is one of the few tracks that gets along quite well with almost nothing going on, as Wainwright's vocal delivery is among his better, and the spare piano part adds an eerieness that little else here succeeds in having; and "The Dream" is just begging to receive a full-orchestra treatment, but Wainwright doing his best to simulate it with a mind-boggling piano part pinning down a pretty melody. I can't decide how much I like the closing "Zebulon": on one hand, it's almost self-parodically boring (he bangs a single piano chord endlessly after each verse), but on the other, that same chord thrills me like nothing else just because I don't expect him to actually play it again (it gets me every time!). I also find the spacey "What Would I Ever Do with a Rose?" very pretty, and don't really mind the 'haughty', 'operatic' Français of "Les Feux D'artifice T'appellant", because it's beautiful. The three Shakespeare sonnets set to music don't really work, though; the lyrics sound so obviously not written for the music (as opposed to Elton's work with Bernie Taupin, where Elton manages to make that tripe fit like a gem...most of the time) that I just don't really get much out of the project.
Aha! This one's different! Wainwright strips the music down to solo piano and vocal, deciding that, after three albums of 'orchestral excess', the time had come to be intimate on record. Is it effective? Well, he's always been intimate behind the layers upon layers of instruments and harmonies, so the only real difference is the arrangement. Unfortunately, the sparsity highlights his seemingly unshakeable flaw: his style just gets boring before a whole album is up. Now, without the weight and extra melodies of orchestras and the like, the relative monotony of the songs starts to grate much more quickly. Certain tracks here still shine - the opening "Who Are You New York?", despite being a list of places, is melodically lovely (and has a great arpeggiated piano part underneath); "Martha" is one of the few tracks that gets along quite well with almost nothing going on, as Wainwright's vocal delivery is among his better, and the spare piano part adds an eerieness that little else here succeeds in having; and "The Dream" is just begging to receive a full-orchestra treatment, but Wainwright doing his best to simulate it with a mind-boggling piano part pinning down a pretty melody. I can't decide how much I like the closing "Zebulon": on one hand, it's almost self-parodically boring (he bangs a single piano chord endlessly after each verse), but on the other, that same chord thrills me like nothing else just because I don't expect him to actually play it again (it gets me every time!). I also find the spacey "What Would I Ever Do with a Rose?" very pretty, and don't really mind the 'haughty', 'operatic' Français of "Les Feux D'artifice T'appellant", because it's beautiful. The three Shakespeare sonnets set to music don't really work, though; the lyrics sound so obviously not written for the music (as opposed to Elton's work with Bernie Taupin, where Elton manages to make that tripe fit like a gem...most of the time) that I just don't really get much out of the project.
- Highlights: "Who Are You New York?", "Martha", "The Dream"
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