During Rufus Wainwright’s recent British tour, the most commonly heard heckle was “I love you!” To his ever-expanding fanbase (including Dame Elton John) he can do no wrong.
Described by Wainwright as the “feminine” side to last year’s acclaimed “Want One” album, “Want Two” is actually a collection of off-cuts from the same sessions. Beginning with the over-the-top, Dead Can Dance-like, “Agnus Dei” which mysteriously repeats the Catholic Latin liturgy “Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy on us”. It seems what Rufus sees as feminine others may describe as self-indulgent absurdity.
“The One You Love” attempts to marry Wainwright’s elegiac vocal glide with a quirky rock backing and it has the same effect as when the, not dissimilar, Divine Comedy do the same: mild irritation. His is a voice that suits softer, more sympathetic, arrangements such as the Radiohead-on-a-summer’s-day lilt of “Peach Trees” or the heartfelt “Memphis Skyline” (about Jeff Buckley). By anyone else’s standards these would be triumphs but Rufus has given us so much better in the past.
What niggles is that many of the songs aren’t whole enough or, if we’re honest (and it’s hard because he’s just so darn loveable and charming), good enough for an album. Even superior compositions like “Art Teacher” suffer under this record’s careless construction. Built on a Nymanesque piano modulation, it showcases Rufus’ ability to mix wit with romance just as his father Loudon did before him: “He told me he liked Turner/Never have I turned since then.” Yet aggravatingly it’s presented here as a live recording – the mic picking up every breath as loud as a symbol crash and amplifying his peculiar tendency to garble words as if he has peanut butter stuck to the roof of his mouth. It was a song that deserved care but here it’s thrown away.
The live favourite “Gay Messiah” does get the studio treatment. Almost his theme tune, since audience members shout this more as a proclamation than a request. He insists he is not the Messiah: “No it will not be me/Rufus the Baptist I be/No I won't be the one/Baptized in cum.” He’s just a very naughty boy. The religiosity suggested by the album opener dissolves in another of Wainwright’s self-confessed attempts to shock his prim folk singer mother Kate McGarrigle (though she must surely be immune by now). Only “This Love Affair” has everything in the right place and it’s as moving and accomplished as anything he’s ever recorded.
With each successive album, Wainwright’s musical prowess and lyrical identity seemed to be growing and while this ragbag collection is an unwelcome interruption to that artistic journey it feels in no way the end. There’s something about Rufus that suggests he’s only just begun. Next time though, we want…more.
