LIVE AT THE UNION CHAPEL - RUFUS WAINWRIGHT
Rufus Wainwright hasn’t played a show at all so far this year - something he keeps reminding the audience with a friendly giggle as if they are friends sitting around him companionably in his own living room. Indeed, the intimacy of tonight’s setting rather reminds on of such; the audience clustered around tables decked out with candles, above which cigarette smoke rises towards the rafters of the high ceiling. And Rufus himself admits that he is “striving to be a lounge singer”!
However, the reactions of the audience add another dimension to the sense of comfort created by the setting. This crowd worship Wainwright - after all, the date sold out in a matter of days, with tickets recently changing hands on ebay for as much as £175! Rufus certainly has his devoted admirers. And, what’s more, unlike so many singers, he actually deserves them! There is absolute silence during every song, and an eruption of noise between; cheering, clapping as well as laughter. For it seems that not only does Wainwright have an incredible voice, but the man also knows how to entertain. He jokes and chats even during the songs, which he constantly apologises for messing up and forgetting the words. The fact is that nobody cares - loves him all the more, perhaps, for knowing that the man has faults - that he isn’t sure where to plug his guitar in, that he’s actually “afraid of guitars”. Because, no matter what, it is clear that he is putting everything into his performance; face contorting with the emotion in each song, voice soaring far above every possible mistake. It is almost as if he lives every song. Whether happy or sad, old or new (and the majority of what Wainwright plays tonight comes from 2001’s “Poses” since, as he says, “I didn’t get a chance to tour that over here”), they all mean something to him, and since they do, they mean something to his audience also.
Currently mixing his new album in London, Wainwright plays several of these new songs tonight. He recently told Rolling Stone magazine that the new album “has a lot of blood in it”, and, judging by these songs, he’s not wrong. For the most part his new songs fit firmly into the more melancholy, introspective territory of his work - a “Poses” (the song rather than the album) as opposed to, say, “Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk”. “Want” finds him declaring “I don’t wanna be Leonard Cohen. I just wanna be my dad” while “Beautiful Child”, while slightly more upbeat, still has a softly lingering refrain. “The Gay Messiah”, however, is firmly tongue in cheek and yet, as always, Wainwright’s voice and lone guitar (he divides his time on stage between that terrifying instrument and his piano) raise the song into something else entirely. The most beautiful moment, however, is when we are treated to that gem of the “Moulin Rouge” soundtrack, “La Compliante de la Butte”. In French, Rufus’s voice becomes its purest of all, the words (which, let’s face it, are nonsense!) no longer important for every note that he hits means more than words. And that is the beauty of Rufus.
