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Underground > Radio & Music >

On Rufus Wainwright

methylsalicylate

15:50 / 22.07.01

thought i'd share - this was taken by my ex-boyfriend in february of this year:

[Moderator note: photo doesn't work any more.]

01:14 / 30.08.01

thanks! i'm a huge RW fan, and love seeing new pictures.

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:00 / 24.03.04

I am hijacking this thread to see if anyone who has heard Want One can tell me whether it's worth buying. When Wainwright is on for me, he's really on - I love 'Instant Pleasure', 'Cigarettes & Chocolate Milk', 'One Man Guy' and 'The Rebel Prince' to death - but I found most of the rest of Poses kinda dull. How's the hit-to-miss ratio on the latest album?

14:29 / 24.03.04

It's a strange album, but it's definitely a grower. My first reaction was that it wasn't that interesting, that it was a bit campy and a bit cabaret, but the more I listened to it the more engaging I found it. Some songs are more immediate, but they tend to get irritating after a while. Others are kind of obscure or difficult to listen to initially and kind of stay that way, but others are just great. Basically you'll start off liking Vibrate, but then it'll really get on your tits. And I couldn't stand Harvester of Hearts or Natasha, but 14th Street is class as is I Don't Know What It Is. Oh What a World is pretty intriguing too. I think my favourite is Go or Go Ahead. Generally it's either a bit spotty or it's a bit hard-going, but if you stick with it, there's tremendous value in it.

17:22 / 26.03.04

WANT ONE is really, really a good album. I strongly recommend it. Tom gives a good sense of it, although I like some of the tracks that Tom's not so crazy about. It has more of the 'catchy single' songs like 'Cigarettes & Chocolate Milk' and 'One Man Guy' than POSES does, but it's still gots other kinds of songs on it too. WANT ONE is very orchestrated in a way that seems to be very influenced by The Beach Boys' PET SOUNDS album.

Great RW photo, by the way!!

13:27 / 01.11.04

Bumping this because I got Want One on one of those five for thirty quid deals at Virgin the other day. And what a good decision it was. At least four or five really excellent songs on there, ( 11:11, I Don't Know What It Is, Go Or Go Ahead, 14th Street, etc ) and nothing, at least so far, that grates on the nerves. There's a pleasing air of louche bohemianism to the whole thing that reminds, in a way, of Scissor Sisters ( that's hopefully not as crass an observation as it sounds - you can imagine them going to the same clubs and parties and so on, plus isn't the last track on the Scissor Sisters album about the NYC crystal meth epidemic that Wainwright apparently fell victim to ? ) Well whatever, anyway, really excellent stuff.

Regrettable Juvenilia

15:06 / 01.11.04

I think the Scissor Sisters comparison is particularly apt if you've heard their cover of 'Take Me Out' (which is more or less just Jake Shears and a piano, as far as I remember) - their ballad-y stuff and Rufus Wainwright are vaguely in the same ballpark...

21:46 / 11.03.05

With regard to the new album, Want Two, I'd advise anyone who's thinking of buying a copy to spend a couple of minutes with it, at least, at the listening post in Tower, HMV or the Virgin Megastore first - As much as I love the guy, and I might change my mind, this doesn't immediately seem like his best effort ever, TBH.

10:08 / 13.03.05

Pathetically enough, I have in fact changed my mind already - I would say it takes a couple of listens, but really, there's an average to good chance that I should never actually post anything on here, y'know, ever again.

13:49 / 13.03.05

Don´t be so hard on yourself.

With your threadbumping you might have alerted some people to discover rw.

And for example, it took me repeated listening to the smiths to get their music, but then they were my favourite band for years.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

06:16 / 15.03.05

I'd never heard the guy until a few days ago, when they played a few seconds off the new album on Radio 4 as part of a review. They didn't give it a particularly good review, but it was the kind of bad review that made me think "Hmm... reckon I might quite like that". For starters, I loved his voice, which is usually enough to keep me going through those early few listens when you're still making your mind up about the music.

Regrettable Juvenilia

15:03 / 22.03.05

Me and mine recently picked up both Want albums. The first one is definitely more immediate - or just more immediately to my liking. It's been a while since I had such a strong immediate emotional reaction to what I think of (possibly erroneously) as fairly traditional songwriting, but 'Oh What A World', 'I Don't Know What It Is', 'Movies Of Myself' and 'Go Or Go Ahead' definitely hit the spot. Very stirring stuff, really pushes the buttons in a very specific sense - a sense of: "I will walk down this city street and feel like my life is a tale in new genre called metropolitan epic!"

And 'Dinner At Eight' just slays me, too much to ever be comfortable listening, I think...

He's not just a pretty face.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

07:57 / 05.06.05

His appearence on last Thursday's 'Culture Show' has made me raid the library for his albums, hmmm, we've only got two, poor show! But he looks like one of those music types not used to Tv interviews, he came over rather shy and has that annoying high-pitched nervous laugh.

--

00:46 / 06.06.05

I have a few of his albums. "The One You Love" is a great song.

Oh yeah, he's really hot, too.

10:55 / 15.06.05

i love "Want One" AND "Want Two" - a friend sent copies and I was just smitten - it's just a shame that he couldn't have had his way and had the two albums put out as one set, as was his original intention, apparently.

Or would that've been too much? Wonder if they'll do that one day - re-release the whole project as one 2xCD set (without the inappropriate live tracks at the end)?

And yes, he is hot. Both me and my wife fancy him...

15:29 / 15.06.05

I think I much prefer a "best-of" the two Wants. I'd like The Art Teacher, and Go or Go Ahead, but I could do without Agnus Dei, or even the title track. I don't know about other markets, but I got my Want Two with a bonus live DVD; never have I seen one pianist smoke so many cigarettes.

By the way, right now, June 15th, that pic at the top is simply an "x"

Regrettable Juvenilia

12:07 / 03.08.05

Things I learnt in the past week or so: Rufus Wainwright's Poses is probably the best album ever for listening to when hungover. And 'California' is the song for the moment when you're ready to admit to yourself that, who are you kidding, you're really not going to give up drinking...

I also really enjoy the contradictions in some of these songs, too. It's sort of a running theme, the tension between "glamour and hedonism = great!" and "no, they don't, it's very sad really". This is all over the title track and 'California' to name but two - the latter simultaneously glorifies California while saying it makes the narrator want to stay in bed... Equally, on the one hand, 'One Man Guy' is a devastatingly sad song about loneliness and delusions of self-sufficiency, but on the other hand, I think we're intended to find the following lines suitably scathing: "People meditate, yeah that's just great, tryin' to find the inner you / People depend on family and friends, just to see them through..." Self-suffiency is bullshit, dependancy is deplorable. Wainwright always feels pulled in different directions. I like that about him, and his music.

18:02 / 31.08.05

"One Man Guy" is a cover of the song, which was originally written and performed by his father, by the way, Loudon Wainwright III.

18:57 / 13.09.05

Reviving this thread because I'm out on the roof terrace with Xoc, smelling newly-repotted lavender, drinking red wine and listening to The Art Teacher. I've taken a while to convert to the undoubted pleasures of Rufus Wainwright, largely because I've always found his voice a bit... well, droney. Even now I've been seduced by Want One (title of which makes me think of Little Britain's Lou and Andy) and especially the gorgeous Want Two, I find it hard to listen to an album all the way through. I dunno, his voice just starts to feel tiring after a while.

Having said which, Want Two is damn near perfect. Took me a while to love Agnus Dei - the sawing violin string at the beginning is deliberately discordant - but now I thrill to the gradual, almost Arabic-sounding increase of tension through repetition - and, when the resolution finally comes, it's faintly orgasmic. I like the splendidly silly Silly Sister ("'til your hair becomes a powdered wig, and I become a total bastard"), the one about burning down Montreal (or something) and, of course, the wonderful Art Teacher. My favourite, though, is probably the extended The Old Whore's Diet, duetting with Anthony of ("and the Johnsons" fame), which just seems a real happy song, with a superb refrain.

And, when we went to see Justin 'Kiki' Bond's solo show, Rufus was in the audience, and the pair of them did a spine-chilling version of Hallelujah which dampened every formerly-dry eye in the house. I'm hearting Rufus right now.

23:56 / 13.09.05

Has anybody seen the DVD?

I want to know if it's worth buying.

Regrettable Juvenilia

09:39 / 06.06.07

I like the way the first post in this thread keeps needing to be edited. Perhaps we should just forget about having a photo there...

New album Release The Stars is out, featuring outrageous photos of Rufus Wainwright dressed as one of the younger Von Trapp boys on the inner sleeve. Apparently he originally set out to make a more stripped down, minimalist record but just couldn't help himself once he was hanging out in the Alps or wherever.

I'm wary of judging this album too early, given how certain other songs of his have grown on me, but at the moment it seems like he's slowly but surely moving in a direction that doesn't enthuse me. He has a tendency to lapse into very 'beautiful' but really quite meandering and seemingly formless ballads - I'm sure they're not actually formless, rather just not tied down to another as gauche and modern as a simple pop melody. Which I'd rather he stuck to more often. There's something very polite and IKEA-friendly about this side of his stuff. And Rufus Wainwright shouldn't be IKEA-friendly, surely? Or maybe some people reading this think he always has been? Is he the soundtrack to louche bohemian indolence or a Sunday afternoon drive in the Mondeo? Your thoughts, please!

Anyway, there definitely is some good stuff on there - while I don't think writing about your home nation as a disappointing lover/friend is very new, especially when it's the USA, he does it particularly nicely on 'Going To A Town' - the sense of tired sadness is both very accurate in terms of that kind of emotional state, and very applicable for those who always want to be able to love America: "I may just never see you again or might as well / You took advantage of a world that loved you well". And 'Sanssouci' definitely does the aforementioned louche bohemian indolence thing as well as one would hope.

Release The Stars has also prompted me to listen to the previous albums again, which is always good. If in the future gravestones are like MySpace pages and you can have a song playing tinnily out of little speakers whenever anyone walks by, put 'Go or Go Ahead' on mine...

14:36 / 06.06.07

iT'S A loaD OF BLOodY ArSe, in'T IT?

JUst like ALl the otHer ONes.

All Acting Regiment

15:24 / 06.06.07

I've heard the new album - the lyrics, for me, are still interesting, but the music less so.

22:03 / 06.06.07

More seriously;

It's very good, of course, you'd expect nothing else, but as with new material by Spiritualized, or Mercury Rev (bands Rufus W seems to have a certain amount in common with, on a couple of levels) I'm not sure how many albums of this stuff anyone really needs. Two or three, obviously, but as with 'Ladies And Gentlemen ...' or 'Deserter's Songs' I wonder if Wainwright didn't say and do everything he wanted to on 'Want One', and that, consequently, unless he deliberately tries to do something different (which might be dishonest art-wise, plus bad for business) he's sort of doomed to try and repeat it.

It's the 'Astral Weeks' question, I suppose - What do you do once you've done your best, and it's actually worked out? The only way forward seems to involve upsetting your fans, which appears to be something that Wainwright is, understandably, reluctant to do.

It's a source of constant amazement that the Meat Pupppets followed 'Two' with 'Up On The Sun', but apart from that I can't think of anyone who's gone on from such a career high.