Rufus Wainwright
Milwaukee at Last!
(Decca)
This live album is more or less a dressed down highlight of Rufus Wainwright's 2007 Release the Stars. Recorded at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee, one can hear the appreciative audience between tracks. However, this album lacks any real delightful stage banter. Nonetheless, at least in this reviewer's opinion, Wainwright is best live and on stage. "Release the Stars" swaggers in with a full brass band, but without any braggadocio. "Going to a Town" and "Leaving for Paris No. 2" are transcendent in their simplicity, Wainwright's voice ever sonorous and melancholic, his piano perfectly balancing between lumbering and lilting with minimal accompaniment from other instruments and vocals. Where Release the Stars was a bit too much, Milwaukee at Last! strips everything down to what makes Wainwright so fundamentally fabulous.
Other tracks not from the 2007 album include a cover of Judy Garland's "If Love Were All" echoing his recent live DVD "Rufus! Does Judy Live at the London Palladium"; "Macushla," a take on a traditional Irish song; and "Gay Messiah" from 2004's Want Two.
So, uncork a good bottle of red, run a hot bath and have a listen. Better yet, catch him live the next time he's in your neck of the woods.