Rufus Wainwright - Want One and Want Two (Album)

Part of a Rufus Wainwright career retrospective to appear on Drowned in Sound:

Spend about ten minutes in the company of Want One, and it will become abundantly clear that this this was the point at which Rufus Wainwright decided to ratchet up the ambition, where for the first time his monumental vocals found themselves consistently paired with arrangements which were sumptuously similar in scale. It was the record he had always been threatening / promising to make, depending on your point of view. The likes of opening track 'Oh, What a World', 'Go or Go Ahead' and '14th Street' in particular were logical extensions of what had gone before, soaring pop songs which precariously piled layer upon layer of instrumentation, while Wainwright's voice and wordplay rose ever more powerfully to the challenge.

However, the impact of Want One would surely have been considerably less, without the contrast provided by the sparser, gentler pieces like 'Harvester of Hearts' and 'Natasha'. Perhaps inevitably, these were shouted down by the more ostentatious songs, but as well as offering a touch of breathing space, they also provided the record with some of its most beautiful moments. 'Dinner at Eight' was the most obvious example of this, laying bare as it did Rufus' oft-discussed Daddy issues in the starkest of fashions: "In fact you were the one / long ago, actually in the drifting white snow / who left me / So put up your fists and I'll put up mine / No running away from the scene of the crime".

Part two of the saga, Want Two, turned out to be a more reflective album, which acted as both counterpart and complementary piece to Want One. As a whole it perhaps didn't hit quite the same heights as its predecessor, although it was a more diverse affair which more than stood up in its own right, probably justifying the decision to split the records rather than release them as a double as originally planned. It wandered further than usual from Wainwright's pop roots, particularly in the mournful 'Agnus Dei' and 'Little Sister' which was steeped in classical influence. This meant that the album was less immediate than most of his other work, but it was still a hugely rewarding listen.

The record's high point was probably 'The Art Teacher' a song built around a gently bubbling piano line, detailing the history of a married woman still pining for a schoolteacher from her childhood. It was sympathetic, affecting and generally gorgeous, and proved to be a fine example of how Wainwright's storytelling abilities should not be overshadowed by his penchant for grandiose musicality. There was more poignancy to be found in the Jeff Buckley tribute 'Memphis Skyline', but it was typically perverse of Rufus that this song was immediately followed by 'Gay Messiah', a mildly graphic and quite probably blasphemous exploration of the reincarnation of its titular deity. This is a contrast which quite neatly sums up the two records which would lay the groundwork for the ever more decadent flights of fancy which followed in Rufus Wainwright's career.