Rufus Reviewed in Pitchfork

I was kind of hoping Pitchfork wouldn't review this one. A rating of 6.7 isn't the end of the world, but something tells me the kids at the fork aren't exactly down with the whole Broadway Cabaret vibe. Here's the meat of the review:

Release the Stars finds Wainwright flitting between opposite poles-- lovestruck and glib, opulent and gimmicky, overblown and undercooked-- with rumpled uncertainty. To be fair, it doesn't take much to locate the source of his wanderings; unlike most new artists, Wainwright came out of the gate with an incredibly assured aesthetic. Both his 1998 self-titled debut and his 2001 follow-up Poses were remarkably developed records-- the former establishing his way with a wending, operatic arrangement; the latter proving his songs nicely amenable to tidy flourishes of 70s AOR. Since then, whether out of boredom, excitement, or desire for the mainstream acceptance he's so frequently pined for, Wainwright's expanded his sound, tempering his natural inclination towards opulence with different song styles and textures, always with mixed results.

It's a meaningless ramble. Either they like it but don't want to admit it, or they hate it and don't want to hurt any feelings. But come on: "lovestruck and glib, opulent and gimmicky, overblown and undercooked". Aren't those the opening lines from the Pitchfork Record Review Guide of Style?

P.S. It's a great record. Do yourself a favor.

Record Reviews at the New York Times

Good stuff at the Times today.

Jon Pareles likes the new Wilco more than most:

The production is straightforward, but the song structures aren’t; that’s where Wilco’s idiosyncrasies still hide out. The tunes amble into instrumental interludes that stack riffs into steely patterns or let Wilco’s lead guitarist, Nels Cline, slice through the calm surfaces. Wilco’s new music is contemplative, stripping away past distractions, but it’s far from placid.

I'm still willing to give this one a chance, but the prospects seem slim, and more than a few diehard Wilco fans have already sworn off the new direction Tweedy's taken the band.

Meanwhile, Nate Chinen revels in the new Rufus Wainwright:

Who else but Mr. Wainwright could come up with a peppy lament for a former paramour with the title “Between My Legs”? Who else would have the British actress Sian Phillips rasp a villainous recitation on that track, over a chromatic horn part lifted from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Phantom of the Opera” theme? And who else would memorialize a brief meeting with a fellow singer (Brandon Flowers, the lead singer of the Killers) by composing a waltz with lines like “Your face has the Marlon Brando Club calling”?

If the answers are obvious, the music somehow isn’t. Remarkably, Mr. Wainwright infuses “Release the Stars” with enough honest emotion to overcome the grandiosity, or at least undercut it a bit.

I've just listened to Release the Stars and it is indeed a surprising and exuberant piece of music. All of the best parts of Poses and the Want records show up in unexpected new incarnations with no filler.