RUFUS WAINWRIGHT

All Days Are Nights: Songs for Lulu

[Decca]

For a dozen years, the arrangements on Rufus Wainwright’s albums got busier and his sometimes naughty, occasionally angry declarations of gay pride got louder. Each new offering suggested that its creator was a few strides closer to crafting something truly monumental in both musical and social terms. This cold and private set isn’t it, although that’s probably due more to personal circumstances than anything related to talent. Wainwright wrote All Days Are Nights while his mother, Kate McGarrigle, was dying of cancer, and there is a quiet, complex sadness even in its less autobiographical material. There’s nothing here except piano and vocal, and Wainwright doesn’t project his words in the way we’ve come to expect from him. Instead of serenading the person in the farthest corner of a packed theater, he’s singing to himself in an otherwise empty room.

–David Styburski