Consumer Guide Album

Rufus Wainwright: Rufus Wainwright [DreamWorks, 1998]
Just like the daddy he so much doesn't want to grow up like, this mother's son is a born clown who hits the racks awash in poetry. Since he's also a mind-boggling original, however, next-big-thingers are sure to fib about the pleasures of his debut. He can write, and he'll write better; his voice has no obvious precedents, and he'll learn to define it. But for the nonce what he has to offer depends mostly on his piano, played to suggest amateur lieder or the accompaniment at rehearsals of Oklahoma!, and the compositional gift of a melodist whose songs seldom snap shut on a sure-shot refrain and incur no discernible debt to blues materials. Especially as embellished by Van Dyke Parks, whose nutball Americana has been waiting for Wainwright since Brian Wilson vacated the premises, his talent is too big to let pass. And if that doesn't make his hyperromanticism easier to take, there's no point being narrow-minded. Kate & Anna McGarrigle it ain't. But a hell of a lot more actualized than Loudon Wainwright III. B+