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Rating:
In November 2004, after three perfect albums, the talented Canadian singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright releases "Want Two," a sort of "second act" to the previous work "Want One".
It may seem less cohesive and with fewer sparks of genius than the previous work, but the album undoubtedly presents itself as yet another series of great songs masterfully arranged.
In the devastated world of pop, where the most talented either dive into electronics or old blues and folk canons, it's nice to have a songwriter who cannot be categorized, with a timeless melodic vein, capable of mixing styles from every era, constructing arrangements so perfect and rich while remaining airy and original.
Let's get to the album.
"Agnus Dei" appears as a strange Overture, a hybrid where Eastern and Western sounds are mixed, as if it were a Gregorian chant sung in a mosque (an almost blasphemous impression), following an intriguing melodic line that then veers into operatic grandeur.
After the dreamlike enchantment of "Agnus Dei" one wakes up to the melodic mastery of "The One You Love", a highly effective pop, a rhythmically and charmingly catchy easy listening in a minor key arranged with meticulous precision, followed by "Peaches Trees", a melancholic and delicate bossa nova, and "Little Sister", a tune complete with 18th-century orchestration worthy of a Rossini of the 2000s.
A misstep compared to "Want One" could be the live pairing "The Art Teacher" - "Hometown Waltz" (an elongated melody the first, and an elegant waltz the second). Even if I don't understand this need to include live novelties, the result is good, and they probably deserved a studio recording.
After the brief live parenthesis, here comes "This Love Affair", a spectacular Lieder incredibly intense, among the highest points of the album.
I am aware that the review becomes cloying in describing each track, but I cannot fail to mention the other great pieces on the record, from "Gay Messiah" an acoustic ballad focused on personal themes, "Memphis Skyline", a passionate song of yesteryear for piano and orchestra, "Waiting For a Dream", a dreamlike track with more modern sounds, and "Crumb by Crumb", a more playful chamber pop.
The album closes with "Old Whore's Diet", the most interesting track. An intriguing melody is obsessively repeated for 9 minutes as if it were a mantra; the introduction is bare, but soon it is enveloped by an Arabic rhythm resulting from a special alchemy where a string quartet, powerful dreamlike choruses (highlighting sister Martha), and the voice of Antony Hegarty (you know Antony and the Johnsons?), whose timbre seems to come from another astral plane, all find their place. This pop rhapsody is fittingly concluded by a choral phantasmagoria to the rhythm of a march.
"Old Whore's Diet" is the emblem of modern apathetic decadence, where depression or loneliness leads the individual to eat at indecent hours, perhaps with leftover Chinese food from two days before; the "old whore's diet" becomes the emblem of this state of mind.
The entire album is dominated by the monotonous yet intense and powerful voice of Rufus Wainwright, who outlines these wide-breath melodies in superb arrangements. Each track is a small work of art, and in melodic pop, it's like dealing with rare tropical flowers on the brink of extinction.
Just like Rufus's first three albums, this record is unmissable.
Rating 8.5/10
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Agnus Dei (05:45)
Agnus dei
Agnus dei
Qui tollis peccata mundi
Agnus dei
Agnus dei
Qui tollis peccata mundi
Dona nobis pacem
Dona nobis pacem
Pacem
Dona nobis pacem
03 Peach Trees (05:59)
Is true love a trip to Chinatown
Or being held in one's opium gaze
Under the peach trees
There I'll sit and wait
Is true love a long walk through Bryant park
Or being held in the month of May
under the peach trees
There I will be, will be until you come and get me
Cause I'm so tired of waiting in restaurants
reading the critics and comics alone
With a waiter with a face made for currency
Like a coin in ancient Rome
And I really do wish you were here next to me
cause I'm going to see James Dean
There I will be
Under the peach trees with him
04 Little Sister (03:22)
Little sister come and sit beside me, beside me
And we'll play a tune on this old piano forte
Just for a while, just for a while, just for a while
Til your hair becomes a powdered wig
And I become a total bastard
Feet that hardly reach the pedal
Sold to a tremendous shadow
Ave ave history is on my side
So complain have no shame
And remember that your brother is a boy
Though it seems the stakes contain some ante-grate
We all feel it still is based on good old intrigue
Just for a while, just for a while, just for a while
You may have to use your hips as fodder
Still putting your best foot forward
Madame didn't stack the cupboard ended up like mother hubbard
Ave, bu hey! (?), history is still a game
So complain have no shame and remember that round one has just been played
And you are poised for centuries to claim
Follow examples from no longer a choice
The world be just a ball to pass or gaze upon
And one more thing
Before we go on again
Let's end this maze
Keep out the threat of a kid
Oh my little-little sister
05 The Art Teacher (03:51)
There I was in uniform
Looking at the art teacher
I was just a girl then;
Never have I loved since then
He was not that much older than I was
He had taken our class to the Metropolitan Museum
He asked us what our favorite work of art was,
But never could I tell it was him
Oh, I wish I could tell him --
Oh, I wish I could have told him
I looked at the Rubens and Rembrandts
I liked the John Singer Sargents
He told me he liked Turner
Never have I turned since then
No, never have I turned to any other man
All this having been said,
I married an executive company head
All this having been done, a Turner - I own one
Here I am in this uniformish, pant-suit sort of thing,
Thinking of the art teacher
I was just a girl then;
Never have I loved since then
No, never have I loved any other man
06 Hometown Waltz (02:33)
The drummers and jugglers in Montreal
Don't even exist at all
So I'm tearing up these tarot cards and Venetians clowns
Antique shops and alcoholic homosexuals
You may ask why I want to torch my home town
Partly it's bitterness and hopping 'round and 'round again
On Ontario Street looking up
Maybe I'll catch him on his way to the show
You travel the world and find all the answers
Everything operates on the unattainables
And then you hear your mother laugh attached to the phone
Could have walked around the block 'cause all roads lead to
home
Say, will you ever ever ever know,
Ever ever ever fly away?
Will you ever ever ever go,
Ever ever ever find a way?
07 This Love Affair (03:13)
I don't know what I'm doing
I don't know what I'm saying
I don't know why I'm watching all these white people dancing
I don't know where I'm going
But I do know that I'm walking
Where?
I don't know
Just away from this love affair
I can't say that I'm cruisin'
Not that I don't like cruisin'
Just that I'm bruisin from you
I can't say that I'm waltzin'
Not that I don't like waltzing
Would rather be waltzin' with you
So I guess that I'm going
I guess that I am walking
Where?
I don't know
Just away from this love affair
08 Gay Messiah (03:14)
He will then be reborn
From 1970's porn
Wearing tubesocks with style
And such an innocent smile
Better pray for your sins
Better pray for your sins
'Cause the gay messiah's coming
He will fall from the star
Studio 54
And appear on the sand
Of Fire Island's shore
Better pray for your sins
Better pray for your sins
'Cause the gay messiah's coming
No it will not be me
Rufus the Baptist I be
No I won't be the one
Baptized in cum
What will happen instead
Someone will demand my head
And then I will kneel down
And give it to them looking down
Better pray for your sins
Better pray for your sins
'Cause the gay messiah's coming
10 Waiting for a Dream (04:14)
Waiting for the present, for the present to pass
Waiting for a dream to last
You are not my lover, and you never will be
'Cause you've never done anything to hurt me
There's a fire in the priory
And it's ruining this cocktail party
Yesterday I heard they cloned a baby
Now can I finally sleep with me?
Diving through the rising, through the rising waves of night
Keeping a reflection of you in hindsight
But in turning back the brackish waters will not reflect you
After you have turned the color black of death or something like that
There's a fire in the priory
And it's ruining this cocktail party
Yesterday I heard the plague is coming
Once again, to find me
There's a fire in the priory
And an ogre in the oval office
Once again we all will be so broken
Now can I finally sleep again?
11 Crumb by Crumb (04:13)
Maybe in you I'll believe
Maybe I'll believe in you
The future of my understanding of love
Many a time I've before
Before I've many a time
Knocked a stranger's door
Discretion hardly I'm known for
Probably has nothing to, nothing at all in the world to do with you
Just your lower lip on the floor
But baby I gotta get through
Crumb by crumb in this big black forest
Maybe in you I'll believe
Maybe I'll believe in you
Suddenly I'm not myself
Behind the facade is a lonely fountain, here
Suddenly you are the one
Who opens the gates to this unruly garden
Come and let this man go, you
'Cause baby I got to get through
Crumb by crumb in this big black forest
Maybe in you I'll believe
Maybe I'll believe in you
Suddenly you're not yourself
Behind the facade is a lonely angel, still
Suddenly I am the one who opens the gates to this now gloomy garden
Come and let this man go crumb by crumb in this big black forest
You I'll believe, crumb by crumb in this big black forest
You I'll believe, crumb by crumb in this big black forest...
12 Old Whore's Diet (08:54)
An old whore's diet
Gets me going in the morning
Ain't nothing like it
Gets me going in the morning
To say I love you
Gets me going where I want to
Oh, gets me going
Oh, gets me going in the morning
(Repeats)
Hell, either here or Hell will do
Either here or Hell will employ you
Suicidal assistance
An old whore's diet
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