Father's Most Pop
Rufus Wainwright’s latest release is as pop-lush as he
claims [“the most pop album I have made”], and whilst we know the production
touch belongs to Mark Ronson, he would appear to have drawn on precursor strokes
of lavishness from the likes of Todd Rudgren, Godley and Creme, and on fifth
track Welcome To The Ball, George
Martin with its Beatlesesque use of trumpets and other sundries. It is all very
pretty with Wainwright’s polished tenor and the whirling choruses that sing
hand in hand as they dance down this luxuriant pop boulevard.
It is this production that dominates over songwriting, nothing
quite matching the quality of songs from early work on Poses, Want One and Want Two, but the confession and angst
that ignited that creative spark has been lessened by that catalyst's familiarity and, presumably
for Wainwright himself as much as family and the public, its acceptance. One of
the strongest tracks for me on this album is in many ways the least ‘pretty’, Montauk, a song written for Wainwright’s
daughter, and its internal key changes provide upsets to the classic descending
melodic line. The lyrics drive this one, and Wainwright’s imagining of a
future meeting and assessment of the father figure seems to reflect the
preoccupations he has had with his own, and perhaps confronting the possible
conflicts he now feels as the one dad who plays a piano and the other who wears
kimonos. It is a song that has an honest anticipation about its hopes and fears,
One day you will come
to Montauk
And see your dad
trying to be evil
One day you will come
to Montauk
And see your other dad
feeling lonely
Hope that you’ll
protect him
and it ends poignantly by appearing to invoke the memory of
his mother Kate McGarrigle
One day years ago in
Montauk
Lived a woman, now a
shadow
But she does wait for
us in the ocean
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