On With The Show

Rufus Wainwright- Release the Stars

Sometimes you’ve got to wonder what happens in Rufus Wainwright’s head. How he can figure out to put together horns, weird keyboard effects and a full backup chorus into one pop piece. He doesn’t seem to think in songs, but in orchestras. Release the Stars is full of these big and foreign sounds. It starts off with “Do I Disappoint You,” a theatrical journey sounding almost like Sondheim decided to write a musical in the Middle East. After a brief foray into the political with “Going to a Town” (whose lyrics have a whiff off Allen Ginsberg’s “America”) he brings us back to the simplicity and fun of his catalog with “Nobody’s off the Hook” and “Between My Legs,” reminding us that he offers more than just the melodic melancholy of “Hallelujah” fame. No matter what he’s singing about, he manages to make light of the darkest of affairs. In slideshow he casually reminds his lover “I better be prominently featured in your next slideshow /'Cause I paid a lot of money to get you over here, you know?” His love stories are sordid and usually failed, but whether fact or fiction he looks past the heartbreak to show us the beauty in having loved and lost.

If this album is flawed it is only through its extravagance. He adds a brass band when he only needs a horn or a chorus when there is more emotion in his symphonic voice. And while the brassy, Motown of “Release the Stars” makes a fabulously uplifting ending, one wonders what it would sound like if it were just him and the piano quietly serenading you in a smoky bar after one too many neat whiskeys. Maybe he needed the extra noise because he moved out of the bar and onto the Central Park Summerstage. Maybe one day he’ll learn that everyone in a sold out arena would be quiet to hear him in the back row. But for now we’ll just have to accept the magnificent racket he’s making.