All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu [CD]

Those of you who recently heard Rufus Wainwright's excellent "Front Row" interview with John Wilson on Radio 4 will be fully up to speed with the background to this album. As "All Days Are Nights: Songs For Lulu" was being recorded Wainwright's mother the wonderful folk singer Kate McGarrigle was dying and eventually passed away. As he states "at the time I was writing this she was really up and down. She had incredible moments of vitality matched with equally depressing times. I had to do this kind of work". Similarly he reprises some of his own personal demons not least of all his experiences and problems with drugs, his uncloseted sexuality and parental opprobrium. Out of this sadness is borne an album of tender beauty and containing some of his most mature work and more importantly his best songs. It takes him firmly away from the recent theatrics of the Judy Garland Tributes and back in the territory of the more reflective parts of "Want"

Some reviews are suggesting that this is an unflinching and sombre listen. That is over simplistic, indeed it is absorbing and beautiful in equal parts and the those who have seen the great man live in concert will have no problems whatsoever with the spare piano accompaniment and that flamboyant tenor voice full of warm vocal timbre. Indeed in many respects the album feels familiar in terms of some of the excellent covers he does live, his version of Neil Young's "Harvest" springs to mind. Its pointless reviewing every song on "All days" since there are no bad songs on the album and you would quickly run out of superlatives. As such lets start at the finish. In "Zebulon" Wainwright has recorded probably one of his greatest songs. The rich ebb of Wainwright's voice runs over a dramatically slow piano and emotions run high as soon as he opens with the words -

"My mother's in hospital, my sister's at the opera
I'm in love, but let's not talk about it
There's so much to tell you"

"Zebulon" is truly stunning and please watch him perform it on Q Music. The journey to track 12 is littered with other enormous high points. The song addressed to his sister "Martha" is a fascinating list of lyrical phone messages that ends with Rufus urging a return call over a rolling piano accompaniment. The three Shakespearean based "Sonnet" songs are all excellent but "Sonnet 20" is gentle and tender piano ballad with an aching vocal from Wainwright which is the first amongst equals. Opener "Where are you New York" has lavish cascading arpeggios combined with a fine lyric and vocal, it segues into the mournful and heart rending "So Sad With What I Have" another huge highlight. "What would ever do with a rose" is the final song I will mention which is one of the purist and most stripped down songs on the album haunted by a Sondheim style melody.

Some have complained in the past that Wainwright has used theatrics and cabaret to hide raw emotions, it is "like listening to the most depressing lounge act in the fanciest lounge in the world" is the loudest criticism. I'm not certain that many would ever agreed with that judgement but in the case of "All days are nights" it becomes superfluous. This is Rufus Wainwright's most powerfully evocative album, he sings throughout like a baroque master and the depth of his song-writing is awesome. In terms of the terrible labels we use this is not "feel good" or chart music, it is an album that challenges, provokes and stimulates. It is classical music for modern times and deserves an audience that will be bewitched by its beauty and grace.

If you are have been a Rufus fan for some time and have loved the big productions on Want and particularly on Release the Stars, you could be forgiven for intially feeling this isn't what you want from Rufus. You may even feel that what you loved about Rufus' music was the flamboyance and to be fair most of this album isn't flamboyant at all - with just a piano it is very pared down even if some of the tracks have some complex piano playing in them.

A week ago when my copy arrived I really felt that way. I adore everything Rufus has ever done, but I played this album once and decided 'I don't like this - why didn't he stick with what we all like'. But I was seeing him in concert a week later and thought I ought to familiarise myself with some of it before I went. So I played it a couple more times and now...I just love it.

If you are an 'old fan' overcome your prejudices, listen to this album repeatedly until it sinks in and you'll love it.

If you are not familiar with Rufus and are just browsing to see if this is worth buying - it absolutely is. It's so clever and it's so beautiful. Just don't expect this album to give you a pop music immediate buzz - this isn't 'burger and chips' instant gratification, but 'Michelin starred' exceptional cuisine which feeds your soul.

I'm bemused by some reviewers here complaining about the music Rufus has created on this album: calling it 'self indulgent'. What the heck do these people think art is if not the product of self indulgence. Rufus has looked inward at his soul, at a challenging time in his life and has been moved to create music that is different in tone and arguably greater in complexity to his previous albums.

What precisely is the harm in this? Why are people calling themselves 'fans' and then moaning that he doesn't stick, for the rest of his life, to one style of music, repeating the same sounds over and over. Just because you are so called fans does not mean an artist should shackle himself to your expectations. There is a reason why he is the world famous musical genius, and you are not.

With this album, and his live show which I've just seen in Sheffield this night, Rufus Wainwright is inviting his fans, and new listeners, down a new musical path. This path doesn't have to be the only one, there is still room for things more familiar to some of us. But Rufus wants at least, to have the chance to experience the less familiar. So he gives us a musically complex experience influenced by classical music. And who but the Music Police on this page can object to that?

Rufus Wainwright has a long career ahead of him. So why shouldn't he experiment and test new waters and allow millions of us to enjoy his adventures with him. But no, there are some people who think he should just churn out the same sounding songs over and over again. A position, which to me, is frankly weird.

So if you are not a selfish person who demands all music to be tailored for their own unimaginative and stale tastes, you will find much that is beautiful and engrossing in this album. Yeah its not easy listening, but there is a whole industry out there churning out easy listening pop music. Rufus Wainwright is one of those few islands of uniqueness in an ever rising sea of homogeneous pap. This album is his way of keeping himself, and us, from drowning in it.