All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu

Rufus Wainwright’s latest offering All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu has been a long time coming. After a string of magnificently grandiose albums full of lush orchestral arrangements, complex harmonies, and flamboyant pop sensibility, it feels right that this quintessential singer-songwriter should strip things down to the bone. Each of the 12 new songs consists of nothing more than brooding vocals and piano. Extremely intense and intricate, All Days Are Nights is far from an easy listen, and fans who are accustomed to hearing Wainwright’s lighter and more playful side might at first be put off. But this is an album that demands repeated hearings before it reveals its complete beauty.

Opening track Who Are You New York? sweeps the listener all over the mentioned city in restless pursuit. Wainwrights' vocals soar and spiral, with hardly a breath between phrases they become overwhelming. In Martha we hear Rufus leaving a series of phone messages to his sister, their mother’s illness being of particular concern. Rufus and Martha’s mother, acclaimed folk singer-songwriter Kate McGarrigle passed away earlier this year after a 3 year battle with cancer. The sense of mourning is evident throughout the album, despite it having been completed some time before Kate’s death. However this album also finds Rufus mourning Lulu, a dark lady figure who represents his decadent yearnings and more destructive vices. It is to her that this album was written, and she makes her presence felt.

Three of Shakespeare’s sonnets are interpreted to music, and provide the classical air that Rufus so effortlessly exudes. They are equally delicate and menacing. But perhaps the highlight of the album is the dramatic What Would I Ever Do With A Rose? A piano motif that alludes to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake gives way to an achingly honest performance. When Rufus sings the final “Never does the dream come true/Without the nightmare”, you can sense the dark lady figure lurking behind him; she refusing to leave him be, him refusing to let her go.

Standout tracks: Martha//Sonnet 43//What Would I Ever Do With A Rose?