Unseeing Eye!

Rufus has a new album called All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu. Rufus who? Rufus Wainwright. Wainwright? Yes, Wainwright – artistic contribution in American literature, journalism, cinema and music. Not to mention crème of the 19^th century American society. So with such an impressive genealogical tree, Rufus must have inherited talent, musical one, like all his brothers and sisters. One of his sisters is the Marta Wainwright. Let’s just throw words like Set The Fire To The Third Bar to refresh memories. Anybody who has seen 'The History Boys' was even more mesmerized of the ending because of another incredible recording of Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, with Rufus’s voice. Rufus’s interpretation completed an extraordinary movie. Yes, just a song, but not just a voice.

From all his previous releasing, and this new one as well, Rufus seems a bohemian artist, a romantic. A romantic singer and instrumentalist whose weapon, lover (he seems to actually caress it) and muse, is the piano. To say that the man knows his piano is putting it mildly. Rufus actually succeeds in using, expressing and reaching musical sensuality with honors.

New York is one incredible world. It is not surprisingly that Rufus chose to add a certain song on his new album. Thus first track, entitled Who Are You New York?. Where he so classically traces, some of New York’s most amazing sites. It is not a fast tempo song nor a slow one. It’s definitely not a ballade or an anthem. It’s an ode. The second track is a lament. The title announces beforehand so: So Sad With What I Have. The piano is his shoulder to lament on. And what a shoulder!

The next piece is something of a revival of sound. Dedicated undoubtedly to his sister Martha. It is a sight into family matters. Troubled matters: an angry relation with his sister and a troubled family due to their mother’s health. Unfortunately their mother, Kate McGarrigle, passed away in the beginning of 2010.A song like Give Me What I Want And Give It To Me Now, stands tall above others because of the upbeat tempo. The track is as vivacious as it can get in Rufus’s will.

Immediately next vivacious is let go, cast way, and is replaced by melancholic tracks. Oh, Mr. Wainwright does melancholy so well. A Woman’s Face is a heart pierce of a song. Poetics, vocals and of course the piano are at their peak. A few keys make a dramatic sound, a touching fatality that supports the voicing. He has a voice to remember, similar to that of Greg Laswell or Damien Rice.

On tracks like True Loves and What Would I Ever Do With A Rose? Rufus proves romanticism ‘till the last key note. And how can not a true romantic sing a little French, ergo Les Feux D’Artifice T’Apellent - if you are expecting a translation, you shouldn’t be. The song chosen as closure for this album is Zebulon. That touches delicate matters to the artist, like Martha. The piano is amazingly touching, something that maybe only the great Cole Porter could so easily and powerfully achieve.

So it’s not a stretch to say: Oh Rufus, the album is de-lovely!

picture courtesy of Wikipedia