Rufus Wainwright

Personnel: Rufus Wainwright (vocals, acoustic guitar, piano, tack piano, half-speed piano, S-6, chamberlin, castanets); Jon Brion (acoustic, baritone acoustic & electric guitars, mandolin, accordion, tack piano, vibraphone, marimba, bass, S-6, optigan, toms, percussion, timpani, crotales, celeste, temple blocks, bells, background vocals); Yves Desrosier (guitar, slide bass); Marty Grebb (alto saxophone); Benmont Tench (piano, keyboards, Hammond organ); Pierre Marchand (keyboards, bass); Glen Hollman (upright & mandolin basses); Ash Sood (drums, persussion); Jim Keltner (drums); Martha Wainwright (background vocals).
Producers: Jon Brion, Pierre Marchand, Van Dyke Parks.
In 1998, the music industry was inundated with recordings by the offspring of '60s and '70s icons. Chris Stills, Sean Lennon, Emma Townshend; nepotism ran unchecked, with varying degrees of aesthetic and commercial success. Rufus Wainwright, scion of acerbic singer/songwriter Loudon Wainwright and Canadian songstress Kate McGarrigle, may share a nasal vocal drawl with his father, but the songs here are closer to Brian Wilson, Randy Newman or Harry Nilsson than Loudon or Kate. The Newman/Wilson connection is underlined by the skewed, neo-Baroque string arrangements and co-production of Van Dyke Parks, whose sensibility seems to mesh perfectly with Wainwright's piano-based tunes.
Wainwright's debut finds him exercising considerable harmonic and compositional chops in the service of a vision that's closer in spirit to some of the eccentric, decidedly non-rock singer-songwriters of the early '70s (like those mentioned above) than anything current. His gift for the extended melodic line serves him well here. Lyrically, Wainwright is able to combine unsentimental passion with unpretentious imagery; no mean feat, even for veteran troubadours. This recording, substantive and rewarding as it is, portends a bright future.