Rufus Wainwright

Wainwright's striking debut from 1998 is steeped in the sounds of cabaret and big Tin Pan Alley numbers. It also has a rare tunefulness and intimacy; it's like Randy Newman by way of Edith Piaf. It's only natural that Van Dyke Parks was brought in for the chamber-like arrangements. "Barcelona" and "April Fools" are two of the album's many highlights.

Rufus Wainwright has a flawless résumé: The son of singer/songwriters Loudon Wainwright
III and Kate McGarrigle, he was playing piano by age six and touring at thirteen, and he has
enough pull to get people like virtuoso arranger Van Dyke Parks to help him with his debut
album. Lucky bastard that he is, Wainwright has the talent to match his good fortune. On
Rufus Wainwright, his incandescent pop songwriting, pianobased melodies and... More >

Just like the daddy he so much doesn't want to grow up like, this mother's son is a born clown who hits the racks awash in poetry. Since he's also a mind-boggling original, however, next-big-thingers are sure to fib about the pleasures of his debut. He can write, and he'll write better; his voice has no obvious precedents, and he'll learn to define it. But for the nonce what he has to offer depends mostly on his piano, played to suggest amateur lieder or the accompaniment at rehearsals of Oklahoma!, and the compositional gift of a melodist whose songs seldom snap shut on a sure-shot refrain and incur no discernible debt to blues materials. Especially as embellished by Van Dyke Parks, whose nutball Americana has been waiting for Wainwright since Brian Wilson vacated the premises, his talent is too big to let pass. And if that doesn't make his hyperromanticism easier to take, there's no point being narrow-minded. Kate & Anna McGarrigle it ain't. But a hell of a lot more actualized than Loudon Wainwright III. (Grade - B+)