Anyone who knows me well will know that I’m a big fan of Rufus Wainwright, the talented singer-songwriter son of Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle, and sister of similarly-gifted Martha. I’ve been a Rufus fan since a purchase of the Want collection in 2006 and his music has become a constant ingredient in the balanced musical diet that I find myself listening to as I mature nicely into my thirties. Generally speaking, if I head ‘out there’ into the more experimental reaches of my music collection, at some point I’ll swing back, pendulum-like, to artists such as Rufus, if only for a while before heading into esoteric territory once again.
I haven’t really listened to much else beyond Rufus this week; specifically, the Milwaukee At Last!!! boxset (you can derive much confirmation of Wainwright’s noted flamboyance from those three exclamation marks), comprising a live CD and DVD recorded at the Pabst Theatre in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on 27 August 2007 whilst on tour to promote his 2007 album Release The Stars.
Rufus, who Caitlin Moran described in The Times as having 'all the quiet, don't-mind-me demeanour of a pissed rainbow on a trampoline', has a singularly incredible talent to write heartfelt yet gauche songs filled with metaphor, innuendo and vivid imagery, ranging from the ethereal, maudlin simplicity of ‘Leaving For Paris No.2’ through to the strident near-jazz of ‘Release The Stars’ or the debauched shimmer of ‘Sanssouci’; it’s a rare accomplishment indeed to have such a constant stream of inventiveness from an artist with five albums under his belt.
And that, in a way, reminds you of just how disappointing Milwaukee At Last!!! is – not that I didn’t want this; I’ve been waiting for an audio recording of a concert on this tour since seeing him live in Oxford in 2007. Simply, it reminds you that it’s about time we had an album of new material from Rufus, but distractions such as his recent opera (in French to purists’ horror) have taken precedence. In the meantime I’ll be looking forward to Not So Silent Night, the Wainwright-McGarrigle family Christmas concert which for this year decamps from Carnegie Hall to the Royal Albert Hall in December.
Although Milwaukee At Last!!! has pretty much been the only thing I’ve listened to this week, I did find the time to listen to ‘In Your Heart’ by Brooklyn’s A Place To Bury Strangers, released on my favourite record label Mute (I love that label so much that I maintain a tribute site). This is the first time I’ve heard this band, and from what I can tell they seem to blend synths, guitars and drum machines together to create a modern reflection on the more urgent side of Jesus And Mary Chain.
Of principal interest was the remix by Vince Clarke, he of fellow Mute acts Depeche Mode / Yazoo and Erasure fame. Erasure remain my favourite act of all time and I’m not at all bothered today to admit that, and Vince Clarke’s particular brand of electronic mastery is entirely responsible for my deep love of electronic music. Having recently decamped to New York, and with Erasure on hiatus while singer Andy Bell completes his second solo album, Vince has strapped on his disco boots to remix a number of artists of late – Franz Ferdinand’s ‘No You Girls’ got a seminal Clarke treatment, as did The Presets and girl-pop group The Saturdays. Vince, by his own admission around 1996, wasn’t terribly good at programming drums and percussion, something he seems to have overcome given the steady 4/4 bass-heavy grooves he adds to all of these remixes, ‘In Your Heart’ included.
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