rufus wainwright : want one

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there's no thread about this so far ?

well isn't it just the gosh-darn, grand-slam, tears-inducing, classic-or-classic album of the year by a country fcking mile. i can't believe how good it is. it makes 'poses' (which i adored much of) sound like the work of a clattered pub pianist mumbling to himself.

it suffers a tad from lumpy-duvet syndrome in the same way 'poses' did in that a lot of the good stuff is all up one en but sheesh. can't reccomend it highly enough.

― piscesboy, Monday, 27 October 2003 12:55 (twenty-two years ago)

huge huge HUGE disappointment

maybe four good songs

a few of them - esp. vibrate and the rhodesy one that sounds like christopher cross on mescaline - are downright cringe-inducing

the lesson: double albums are always always always a bad idea

― mark p (Mark P), Monday, 27 October 2003 13:04 (twenty-two years ago)

poses is a hundred times better

― mark p (Mark P), Monday, 27 October 2003 13:05 (twenty-two years ago)

sorry not mescaline i meant ketamine

christopher cross on mescaline could be kinda wicked

― mark p (Mark P), Monday, 27 October 2003 13:07 (twenty-two years ago)

poses is better - there's some really good stuff on "want one" but 1) "vibrate" is a steaming turd 2) the otherwise excellent opening number suffers from some really tortured grammar right at its climax ("Wouldn't it make a lovely headline: "Life is Beautiful" on the New York Times" - ARGH you can't just randomly place your prepositional phrases, this isn't LATIN)

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Monday, 27 October 2003 13:28 (twenty-two years ago)

whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat ?

are you lot *nuts* ?

the cover is something of a homage to a certain momus album
from some years back see here :

http://www.phespirit.info/momus/199301.htm

http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=60613875

(click to enlarge)

― piscesboy, Monday, 27 October 2003 13:31 (twenty-two years ago)

oh christ "vicious world" that's the other one

SO SO SO SO crap

― mark p (Mark P), Monday, 27 October 2003 13:32 (twenty-two years ago)

piscesboy you're hurting your own case here

― mark p (Mark P), Monday, 27 October 2003 13:33 (twenty-two years ago)

My phone's on vibrate for you
Electroclash is karaoke too
I try to dance Britney Spears
I guess I'm getting on in years

― mark p (Mark P), Monday, 27 October 2003 13:33 (twenty-two years ago)

john it's pop music !! he can say, do and place what he likes where he likes !!! just as morissey can say 'prophesised' and the stranglers can invent the word 'shakespearos' and ...oh you people.

i despair !

― piscesboy, Monday, 27 October 2003 13:34 (twenty-two years ago)

MORE bad grammar

― mark p (Mark P), Monday, 27 October 2003 13:34 (twenty-two years ago)

search:
"i don't know what it is"
"go or go ahead"
"14th street"
"beautiful child" (i think)

― mark p (Mark P), Monday, 27 October 2003 13:35 (twenty-two years ago)

piscesboy, of course there's some flexibility - "prophesised" is kinda funny, like a willful affectation (the sort of thing La Mozz does lots, to further endear him to his audience). There's nothing endearing about "Wouldn't it make a lovely headline: 'Life is Beautiful' on the New York Times." It just sounds really, really stupid. And especially since the pop tradition he's writing in privileges cleverness, it makes him sound like something of a poseur.

Rufus's lyrics have always been his great weak spot, anyhow. It's just that on "Want One," where he seems to actually want to say something, they're sort of thrown into relief.

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Monday, 27 October 2003 14:04 (twenty-two years ago)

god knows what you must make of the lyrics of noel gallagher.

― piscesboy, Monday, 27 October 2003 14:33 (twenty-two years ago)

they suck

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Monday, 27 October 2003 14:36 (twenty-two years ago)

heh heh. well i guessed as much.

john do you hate fun ?

― piscesboy, Monday, 27 October 2003 14:40 (twenty-two years ago)

haha. No! But the thing is, with Oasis, it doesn't matter a smidge - they're a ROCK band. They could be singing in Dutch for all it mattered. Rufus casts himself as a Tin Pan Alley/music-hall heir, and his musical chops are more than up to the task: he has the best sense of melody of anybody alive, I'd say. Which is why it's doubly irritating that he doesn't seem to want to either find somebody who could write workable lyrics for him or spend more time revising. The tradition in which he places himself is one in which the lyrics should be somewhat clever. "Electroclash is karaoke too" not only isn't clever; it's very nearly fails to convey any meaning at all.

NB "Want One" is still in the changer, because I heart Rufus so very much. But his lyrics are generally quite ass, and to say "they're pop lyrics! they can ignore super-basic grammar" is to suggest that the Spice Girls' "Say You'll Be There" would still have been great if it had been called "You'll Be Say There" and revised accordingly.

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Monday, 27 October 2003 14:48 (twenty-two years ago)

"it's very nearly" = "it very nearly," obv.

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Monday, 27 October 2003 14:49 (twenty-two years ago)

It's growing on me. I liked the songwriting on Poses best, and the production best on the first album.

Lyrically, "Vibrate" bears the influence of his father's ill-advised attempts at contemporary cultural references (c.f. Last Man On Earth) but yes, damn if it ain't a lovely little melody.

The grammar thing has been an issue for rufus in the past:
"There's never been such grave a matter/As comparing our new brand-name black sunglasses"

― Kevin Erickson, Monday, 27 October 2003 15:01 (twenty-two years ago)

fwiw, my problems with the album have less to do with rufus' lyrics (which, overall, i have much less of a problem with than j0hn) and more with the way that wainwright seems to have embraced really glossy, lightweight pop production values at the expense of the "tin pan alley/music hall" thing that gave him a bit of singularity around the time of his debut.

the thing i liked most about poses was that it seemed to further reconcile his obviously classicist leanings by exaggerating, almost overblowing, the pop elements of his songs in really interesting and uncontrived ways.

it's probably fucking tchad blake's fault, but 'want one' feels completely tamed - a little too plush, a little too perfect...

― mark p (Mark P), Monday, 27 October 2003 15:08 (twenty-two years ago)

that said, "14th street" sounds lot like the song rufus has been trying to write for three albums now

― mark p (Mark P), Monday, 27 October 2003 15:10 (twenty-two years ago)

I do gotta say, "Go or Go Ahead" is heartstoppingly beautiful

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Monday, 27 October 2003 15:14 (twenty-two years ago)

this record is nowhere near as good as poses but i have only listened to it twice so far so i'll come back later!

― jed (jed_e_3), Monday, 27 October 2003 15:39 (twenty-two years ago)

I like it better than Poses, but my fave is his debut. I thought the lyrics were best on the first one. They were less self-conscious, more innocent, if that can be said in any context re: Rufus.

I do think Want One is oddly mixed. I always feel at any given moment that I'm hearing too much of the wrong things. Maybe there's too much going on.

― scott m (mcd), Monday, 27 October 2003 18:54 (twenty-two years ago)

I like them all, but I didn't play the first two over and over like I'm playing the new one. Love it.

― Sean (Sean), Monday, 27 October 2003 20:01 (twenty-two years ago)

the single most disappointing record of the year. but for me it isn't the lyrics, it's the music, which is so utterly lacking in hooks i can hardly believe it's the same guy who made "poses."

― fact checking cuz, Monday, 27 October 2003 22:34 (twenty-two years ago)

As someone who quite liked the first record but would mainly return over and over again to "Danny Boy", would I like either of the following two albums?

― Tim Finney (Tim Finney), Monday, 27 October 2003 23:47 (twenty-two years ago)

You'd probably like the new one better than "Poses" - I suspect you'd find Rufus's nods toward "beats" on Poses pretty lame. Want One is brasher-sounding than Poses, and has a few super-soaring moments like those that characterized the debut.

I let my disappointment that Rufus isn't The Savior Of Singer-Songwritering get the better of me sometimes - it's a really good record, and its highest moment are great-big-healthy-long-cry-inducing. I just wish he had his father's gift for a turn of phrase instead of just a heartfelt but unsubstantiable convinction that he does.

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 00:08 (twenty-two years ago)

It's actually funny you mention daddy Wainwright, Mr. D, because I played Tallahassee at Martin Skidmore during my UK visit -- he hadn't heard anything by ya before -- and he heartily approved and said a lot of it reminded him of...Loudon Wainwright. So there ya go.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 28 October 2003 00:42 (twenty-two years ago)

well for me (albeit drunk, and worse, drunk on a bonfire weekend, and worse still at my parents' house) it's getting better and better with each listen. jeez i'm even on soulseek getting live stuff and rare gap ads and live tracks.
he did a song on 'shrek' - hey ! who knew ?

― piscesboy, Saturday, 1 November 2003 23:35 (twenty-two years ago)

the first album is marvelous. i didn't much like the second though i'd admit it is smarter and more clever than the first but less full of sparkling, over the top glee. i haven't heard the third. pearlfishers mine a somewhat similar territory although less cabaret and more brian wilson and david scott is a fantastic lyricist and really probably a much better songwriter than rufus(most everyone else too really) if not quite the performer, i suppose i am missing the point. nevermind.

― keith (keithmcl), Sunday, 2 November 2003 21:20 (twenty-two years ago)

who are pearlfishers then keith ? ne'er heard of them.

― piscesboy, Monday, 3 November 2003 12:42 (twenty-two years ago)

one year passes...

"Natasha" is a really wonderful fuzzy all-the-family-round-the-dinner-table-at-Christmas, throw-the-baby-into-the-fire song.

― lester gingham, Saturday, 22 October 2005 21:50 (twenty years ago)

With exceptions ("Dinner At Eight," "11:11," "Vicious World," "I Don't Know What It Is"), the album is still turgid, lumpy, and bathetic.

Poses is still his most focused album.

― Alfred Soto (Alfred Soto), Saturday, 22 October 2005 22:07 (twenty years ago)

I would quite disagree, though I don't know what "bathetic" means. Or I don't know. A song like "Harvester of Hearts", for instance, in the light of a not-that-strong first chorus sort of strains to find greatness for itself via countless chordal breakdancing and maybe, perhaps time will tell, achieves it. If there is a problem with the album the occasional chordal breakdancing in search of greatness may be it. Though there are enough unproblematically great songs on the album for it not mar things too much.

― lester gingham, Sunday, 23 October 2005 01:48 (twenty years ago)

i hate the way he's singing now. really strained and monotone.

― jed_ (jed), Sunday, 23 October 2005 11:29 (twenty years ago)

the album is still turgid, lumpy, and bathetic.

Humpy, even?

― lester gingham, Monday, 24 October 2005 12:59 (twenty years ago)

looking back i was right.

my favourite hands-down fave album of the decade thus far. by a mile.

― piscesboy, Monday, 24 October 2005 13:01 (twenty years ago)

That's what i want to hear.

― lester gingham, Monday, 24 October 2005 14:39 (twenty years ago)

eighteen years pass...

dinner at 8 is a real stunner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A2Wrduc7WI

― I Chet the Holmgren (Spottie), Thursday, 11 July 2024 21:44 (one year ago)

two months pass...

make the perfect single disc want by combining one and two challenge

oh what a world
i don't know what it is
vicious world
movies of myself
peach trees
go or go ahead
the one you love
14th street
the art teacher
gay messiah
beautiful child
want
dinner at eight

surprisingly difficult even tho i obv prefer want one

― ivy., Monday, 30 September 2024 14:40 (one year ago)

"dinner at eight" is the most devastating song

― ivy., Monday, 30 September 2024 14:41 (one year ago)

also hmmmm how much did "the art teacher" and rufus in drag on the cover of want two imprint on me... i mean maybe just as much as being obsessed with his records in high school did

― ivy., Monday, 30 September 2024 14:45 (one year ago)

From your list, I'd swap out Want and Beautiful Child for Memphis Skyline and Natasha which are two of my favourites. This Love Affair would probably have to be on there too.

― kitchen person, Monday, 30 September 2024 14:54 (one year ago)

I miss "Vibrate," ivy

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, 30 September 2024 15:03 (one year ago)

i was devastated to cut natasha. i’m disinclined to cut title tracks bc there’s obv something there for the artist but yeah sure throw in memphis skyline or pretty things instead

― ivy., Monday, 30 September 2024 15:37 (one year ago)

natasha and 11:11 would have to be on mine.

i think id just keep most of part one and swap in the art teacher and memphis skyline somewhere. the drop off from one to two is pretty drastic i think.

― lil $CHUB (Spottie), Monday, 30 September 2024 18:38 (one year ago)

i appreciate the mistier more baroque approach of want two carrying through pretty much the whole thing, i also i fucking loooooooove "gay messiah," can't help it, but yeah it is somehow starkly weaker

― ivy., Monday, 30 September 2024 18:48 (one year ago)

oh and "the one you love" is prob my favorite rufus song

― ivy., Monday, 30 September 2024 18:48 (one year ago)

idk why it just is

― ivy., Monday, 30 September 2024 18:51 (one year ago)

having both these records soundtrack the earliest notions i had of romantic love... helplessly in thrall to them still

― ivy., Monday, 30 September 2024 18:51 (one year ago)

oh yes the one you love would have to be on there too. gay messiah is striking

― lil $CHUB (Spottie), Monday, 30 September 2024 18:56 (one year ago)

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