My Big, Gigantic Drum Kit

Linda Thompson doesn’t get nearly enough credit. You marry one of rock’s greatest guitarists and songwriters in your youth and establish your rep singing his songs, and then, when the bottom drops out, everyone seems to forget that you more than held up your end in that collaboration by doing nothing more than singing beautifully. Of course, putting out only three albums of new material over the course of as many decades doesn’t help.

I was listening to Versatile Heart from 2007 this morning, and I’d forgotten how good it is, particularly this Rufus Wainwright-penned tune with Antony on backup. There’s also a well-chosen cover of Tom Waits’ anti-Iraq War ballad “Day After Tomorrow” (one of the only Waits tunes of the last decade that holds up to his best work) that’s actually improved upon with Thompson’s comforting, empathetic delivery.

(Source: Spotify)

rachael-maddux:

I kinda love this song in spite of or perhaps because of its preposterously overt date-rapeyness, and this is one of my recent favorite versions, but it really seems like a wasted opportunity to have not switched up the parts with these two particular singers. For some reason I really enjoy imagining Sharon trying to lure Rufus to stay overnight and Rufus feebly (roofily? rufily?!) refusing.

I was just discussing this song and its supposed date rapeyness, and I was surprised to find that, line for line, it’s a lot more innocuous than I’d thought. Maybe I’d just heard too many creepy renditions where the singers portray the “wolf” and “mouse” too broadly as predator and prey (not the case with Wainwright and Van Etten, who make it sound like the heat went out hours ago, there’s no booze, and neither party’s too interested in a cuddle on the couch, much less anything beyond that).

The “mouse” spends the song stalling exclusively in the interest of propriety; practically all of her refusals are along the lines of “what will the neighbors/my family say?” As for “Say, what’s in this drink?”, it’s all in the delivery, isn’t it? Play it as suspicious, and that extra something might be a roofy; play it as curious, and it might just be a heavy (and fully appreciated) hand with the whiskey. There’s a strategy being worked out here, and it’s not exclusively on the guy’s end: “I ought to say no, no, no, sir / At least I’m gonna say that I tried.”

In giving the date rape interpretation too much weight, we may just be looking at the wrong power imbalance. Assuming the “mouse” is fully interested in the “wolf” (again, perhaps a matter of context and performance) and her refusals are concessions to propriety, it’s not too far-fetched to say it’s about a woman’s process of taking charge of her sexuality in light of possible slut shaming from her family and neighbors. They’re both conspiring against a sexually repressed society!

But it’s probably all about the delivery. I don’t think Wainwright and Van Etten sell it on any level (a bummer, since Wainwright’s a proven talent on Christmas tunes), but a gender-swap probably would have helped it along.

(Source: Spotify)

I wrote one of two PopMatters reviews that were published today for the new Rufus Wainwright. Despite some slight misgivings about the album’s pacing, I think it’s one of the best pop singer-songwriter albums of 2012 so far and Wainwright’s best in quite a while; Enio Chiola, who wrote the other review is, um, far less impressed.

Aside from the fact that his review reads like a takedown of Wainwright the person in places, I couldn’t disagree more with the notion that Out of the Game is moralizing and self-pitying. The title track isn’t embodied in the lines “Look at you suckers / Does your mama know what you’re doin’?” nor in the lines “Say, come over here / Let me smell you for one last time / Before you go out there / And ruin all of the world, once mine.” It’s in the humor where the twin impulses of snarky dismissal and nostalgia intersect — have fun out there with your empty lives of drugs and anonymous sex, but goddamn if I’m not gonna miss my old empty life of drugs and anonymous sex…

And so the rest of the album goes, at least to my mind. Wainwright’s never been out to capture the human condition in full, but rather to provide the State of the Wainwright at a moment in time (with occasional detours into sharp storytelling like “The Art Teacher,” “The Consort,” etc.). So it should hardly come as a surprise that not all of Out of the Game is designed for easy identifiability. Most of us can’t live like Wainwright (although as an expectant father, I find quite a lot to identify with in “Montauk,” despite being straight and not having a second home in upstate NY; as well as in the straightforward love of “Respectable Dive”), but, then, most of those who can live like Wainwright can’t write melodies and words like Wainwright can.

Wainwright doesn’t fish for empathy when it comes to his ridiculous life, hanging with famous people, traveling from exotic locale to exotic locale. To interpret “Rashida” as an oblivious, petulant complaint about not getting invited to a glamorous party is to miss the irony in the Queen-level opulence of the arrangement and the final kiss-off “I’d like to thank you, Rashida, for giving me a reason to call Miss Portman and to write this song.” This may not be Watch the Throne in terms of wealth calling attention to itself for critique, but it’s in the Porter-esque style of name-dropping for comedic effect, which doesn’t lack an element of upper-class self-ridicule.

I wouldn’t claim that Out of the Game is on the level of Wainwright’s very best work, but I have trouble squaring Chiola’s negative review with the smart, tuneful, and generally well-rounded pop album I’ve been listening to.

therichgirlsareweeping:

Rufus Wainwright — Out of the Game (produced by Mark Ronson)

Ok, Rufus, I adore you; let’s never part again! xoxo

Out of the game, indeed. Sheesh.

So did everyone else sort of tune out on his original stuff after Release the Stars? I admit I never even gave All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu a chance (maybe I should?).

But this. This is damn good.