A decade after its release in 2011 and I am spending my time raving about Rufus Wainwright’s Poses. Oh well, the reward for spending my life waking up four hours before I have to is that I get to write about stuff there is no real reason for me to write about.
I woulda shoulda coulda gotten into Poses years and years ago but:
1. I couldn’t get passed Rufus’ voice on his debut
and
2. Passed on it entirely
3. Including the Judy Garland period because
4. I know Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall like the back of my hand and
5. Don’t need Rufus to tell me shit about her
plus
6. He ain’t Morrissey
and
7. I wanna fuck Martha plus she did “Motherfucking Asshole which was
8. Better than “Dinner At Eight”
and
9. Both daddy Daddy Loudon
so
10. I choose Loudon
and
11. I wasn’t so thrilled when Rufus showed at Martha’s gig at the Highline a coupla years ago
or
12. At daddy’s gig at the same place
so
13. Fuck him, right?
except
14. I caught Rufus on Costello’s “Spectacle” and was
15. Blown away.
Ok enough with the fucking numbers, when I’m blown away I find out what I missed and I caught up pretty fast. So “Vibrate” was a turning point but I hadn’t reached Poses and a coupla weeks ago I heard Rufus perform it at Carnegie Hall and it was all over.
So i bought the album which I thought I knew but I didn’t and this is how it goes. It is not a gay fantasia, it is a rock masterpiece like an Exile or a Get Happy or a JL/POB: it is a deep, artistic testament by a singular man.
What I mean is that the songs add up to singularly take at a certain time and place. New York City at the turn of a century, as a handsome young rock star tries to figure out just how shallow is shallow.
There are four 1st tier masterpieces
Cigarettes And chocolate Mile
Greek Song
Poses
Grey Gardens
Four real real good songs
Shadows
California
The Tower Of Learning
One Man Guy
And the rest are more than alright.
It is beyond consistent. Song after song is first rate or more. And they never leave focus. This is an album where homosexuality is front and center but it is not about gayness or gay culture or “people”. It is about the distance between the shallow and the depth. It lives up to its names, it is a posed by a one man guy and the guy is Rufus: it is solipsistic and hipsterish and cool, and smartass. He admires his red jacket, compares sunglasses,. “You turn me on, the girl has gone, cmon let’s go…”