For an artist whose studio albums have been so meticulously co-crafted with name-brand producers such as Jon Brion, Mark Ronson, Mitchell Froom, Marius de Vries and Pierre Marchand, Rufus Wainwright loves the live experience.
Including his epically showy tributes to Judy Garland, Rufus Does Judy At Carnegie Hall and Rufus Does Judy At Capitol Studios, and the upcoming Pacific Jazz Orchestra-ted I’m A Stranger Here Myself: Wainwright Does Weill, vocalist/composer Wainwright has seven live albums, most of which are genuinely different from the last.
The marvel in this wealth of Wainright’s concert recordings surely stems from the majesty of his slippery vocal qualities, a sliding bassoon-like voice with a range and tone that’s always large and in charge.
One of the most impressive ways in which to hear these dynamics are those rare opportunities where Wainwright performs without a band or an orchestra: solo, which allows his voice to stretch more widely across his piquant brand of chamber pop and intuit the sound of his albums’ rich instrumentation with just an acoustic guitar and a piano by his side.
That’s what Wainwright did to a quickly sold-out crowd at City Winery Philadelphia: go it alone.
For the most part, he never failed to amaze.
Wainwright took the quizzically impressionistic theatricality of “Grey Gardens” and slowed things down from its opulent, multi-tracked Poses album version to just him and his coolly dramatic undulation on piano, moving to and fro, allowing his strangely, fascinated lyrics room to breathe. “Vibrate,” too, found Wainwright taking his time with his mixed metaphorical cell-phone/romance/aging paean with his vocals tickling each phrase. “Poses” strode pensively as Wainwright talked up the joys of weather leather and cool sunglasses while in love with Manhattan (“The green autumnal parks conducting/And the city streets a wondrous chorus”).
But a strange thing occurred that seemed to run counter intuitively to most of what Wainwright’s languid songs are and do best: He rushed through a bunch of his material.
Sure, this evening offered audiences a first live listen to his upcoming Kurt Weill album by debuting “Surabaya Johnny,” and as it was still fresh, its stops and starts were no big shake. Weill’s melancholy melody and Bertolt Brecht’s lyrics of disappointment and woe certainly came through, but why so hurriedly? The same speediness, however, affected Wainwright favorites from “Sanssouci” and “Old Song/Early Morning Madness” to “Montauk” and “Gay Messiah,” tracks whose lyrics hold detail-heavy focus on what it means to be young and live freely.
“The Art Teacher” did, as it always does, roll on (with a forward-moving, Philip Glass-esque ostinato) over lyrics that team a student’s obsessions with Rubens, Rembrandts, Turners and Sargents to that of her instructor. At City Winery, though, Wainwright raced those same obsessions to an imaginary finish line, barely allowing the young girl in lust with her teacher a chance to ruminate and move on. And when it came to fast-pacing one’s obsessions, the always-quick-stepping “Cigarettes And Chocolate Milk” added a healthy dose of caffeine to that nicotine-and-cocoa-stained recipe.
That said, a fast Wainwright is better than no Wainwright, and his familiar encores—the tortured socio-politicism of “Going To A Town,” the swallowed, holy screed of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”—still spilled forth like tenderly intoned, baroque-cosmopolitan prayers. We all just got home from the prayer services a little bit earlier this night.
—A.D. Amorosi
