It starts with singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright belting snippets of a traditional Catholic mass in Latin and ends with a flagrant transsexual named Antony claiming an “Old Whore’s Diet” does, indeed, make for a rejuvenating breakfast.
A follow-up to 2003’s Want One, Wainwright’s appropriately-titled Want Two found its way to the public last Tuesday.
Want One, released in 2003, is an enduring album that can be enjoyed almost regardless of fluctuating preferences. The disc’s attractiveness comes from its huge choruses, crescendo-building magnificence and overall flexibility — areas where the new album falls short.
Want Two is a throwback to Wainwright’s earlier releases and is comprised of unique and interesting songs that, though enticing, do not come together to form such a monumental and compelling work as its predecessor.
Over the course of his career, Wainwright has created, on the whole, very eclectic music that requires a certain state of mind to really enjoy. And for Rufus Wainwright fans, Want Two is a journey back in time: back to 1998, back to 2001, and back to a less intense and earth-shattering time in Wainwright’s career.
More than anything else, Rufus is still a pretty quirky guy — and his new album demonstrates that just as well as its forerunners.
Wainwright’s self-titled 1998 release managed to frame the singer-songwriter’s strong vocals through a series of melodic pieces that, though stunning, are initially rather hard to swallow. “April Fools” guarantees the album’s potential and draws interest, but the album’s appeal quickly fades with a transition into the dark and brooding tracks that follow.
After several listens, Wainwright’s intoxicating vocal styling thins the quicksand below fans and non-fans’ feet alike: escape from the album’s hastening charm is hardly foreseeable. Eventually, one comes to appreciate each track as a unique path on which Wainwright is the guide — his drawn-out, powerful vocals drag listeners by the ears through both traumatic heartbreak and tremendous exhilaration.
In 2001, Poses elevated Wainwright to sophomore status with more personal and captivating songs than his debut. The album features “Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk,” a song about the pleasant and not-so-pleasant indulgences Rufus can’t help but allow himself. The title track “Poses” is an album anchor, serving to sweetly serenade audiences through the swifter and more upbeat tracks on either side.
One of the more noteworthy aspects of the album is an increased level of production quality from that of Rufus Wainwright. Several tracks showcase a quick tempo and a variety of background effects and have a tremendous ability to weave the album together as a coherent final product.
In 2003, Rufus took the next step by creating Want One. The album is full of songs that inspire motorists across the world to sing out loud in a hollow attempt to match Wainwright’s vocal mastery. The album’s startling monumentality forces at least an open mouth and pained grimace as any listener-turned-vocalist recounts the emotion expressed by its most passionate tracks.
The album’s fabulous track list includes songs both massive and minute in impact, swaying between ardent outbursts and quiet lullabies. “Oh What a World” and “Go or Go Ahead” are extravagant and complicated, blending literally hundreds of vocal fragments into enormous crescendos that wean audiences from reality and thrust the singer-songwriter’s feelings into the foreground.
The intense tracks blend together with more delicate pieces, and the album starts as a mounting journey into Wainwright’s psyche and ends as a subtle fairytale, though its subject matter is hardly suited for a children’s book.
Wainwright’s Want One tour managed to recreate the intricacies of the album’s compositions by employing a herd of backup singers, percussionists and musicians to add to Rufus’s performance on stage. Throughout the show, the supplemental band members left and allowed Rufus to lament or exult as necessary with just a Yamaha piano or his favorite guitar.
In the summer of 2004, Wainwright released Waiting for a Want, a four-song EP, via the iTunes music store. The collection exposed many of Want Two‘s best tracks including “Waiting for a Dream” and “Gay Messiah.” Four great tracks burned into the LCD screens of Wainwright-fan iPods across the country indicated only that more was to come. Indeed, the rest of Want Two, using Waiting for a Want as a gauge, should have been mind-blowing.
The effect of Waiting for a Want, for those Rufus fans endearing enough to wade through the online music store to purchase the album, was to downplay the overall impact of Want Two as a whole: the best songs do, in fact, come to those who bought Wait.
Want Two finally arrived on store shelves Nov. 16, 2004.
For those readers who have not yet indulged, make sure to be seated before taking the plunge.
Wainwright has been performing many of the tracks from Want Two on tours since the release of Want One and beyond, and the first track seemed just as strange live as it does in the studio release. “Agnus dei, qui tollis peccata mundi,” Wainwright sings, and after translation: “Lamb of God, you who take away the sins of the world.”
The entire first track is in dark, imposing Latin, though the ending picks up in a sort of ambiguously hopeful way. With obvious religious undertones, the song gets the album rolling strangely.
The disc progresses into a fast-paced “The One You Love” and quickly fades into a lovely serenade. “Peach Trees” builds slowly to include a gorgeous assortment of background percussion and vocals, though no aspect of the song so effectively captivates as Wainwright’s voice itself.
The three subsequent tracks include two quick and interesting songs reminiscent of the early 1900’s carnival scene and another about a little girl.
Wainwright wrote “The Art Teacher” from the point of view of a schoolgirl who falls in love with her Joseph Turner-inspired art teacher; the track’s very simple, underlying piano is effectively stimulating. A tiny horn part was added to the otherwise unmodified Waiting for a Want track, but the horn adds nothing to the song and seems completely arbitrary.
Of the next four tracks, three were previously released on Waiting for a Want, and all appear to be unmodified from their original debuts.
“Waiting for a Dream” is probably the song most reminiscent of Want One. The titillating, late-hitting bass gets the song flowing pleasantly, and Rufus allows his voice tobe the guiding light, as usual, to create an overall enchanting piece.
“Gay Messiah,” a fabulously euphonic track, contains some unappetizing plays on words but is nevertheless intoxicating — especially with the added choral support and a sweet transition into “Memphis Skyline,” a new Wainwright zinger.
The album ends with perhaps the two most interesting tracks.
“Crumb by Crumb” begins with a strange backup-vocalist introduction that makes the song seem atrocious. Eighteen seconds in, the background vocals become just that, Rufus is brought to the foreground, and the song takes off in the right direction.
Appending to the aforementioned Want Two disclaimer, first-time “Old Whore’s Diet” listeners should not be driving or operating heavy machinery. The song elicits an absolutely shocked reaction, causing new listeners to drop whatever task previously being performed as well as their jawbones.
As if its lyrics alone weren’t weird enough, Wainwright put the song to a rumba-like beat with various percussion and stringed instruments kicking in about a minute and a half into the song after a very strange eruption by a group of female singers.
Wainwright also added the interesting vocal performance of Antony to the song’s already-eclectic mix. Antony, from the extremely flamboyant Antony and the Johnsons, trades off with Rufus in professing that an “old whore’s diet gets [him] going in the morning,” and that there “ain’t nothing like it.”
Want Two left me wondering both what an old whore actually eats in the morning, as well as what the disc was about overall. Long-time Wainwright fans will enjoy the disc but should not look forward to another release as powerful as Want One.
For those who have never picked up a Rufus Wainwright album in the past, look to Want One, progress slowly and cautiously onward, and enjoy.
Grade: B
