The Post-Rockist

Rufus Wainwright
Release the Stars

Not Ready to Love from Release the Stars
The Tower of Learning from Poses

Rufus Wainwright’s newest work, Release the Stars, is typical of Rufus’s entire catalog of songs–sophisticated lyrically and musically, offering several different variations on love, hate, self-doubt, and self-aggrandizement with his own special elixir of pathos and playfulness.

Ugh. I hate the need to sum artists’ work with big general concepts that can’t tell the entire story. I mean, that’s the part that always holds me up, you know? It’s like a game show question, almost: “Scotter, for the block, describe Rufus Wainwright’s new album in 60 words, using at least 5 descriptive adjectives, 3 adverbs, and a simile.” And I’m clutching for words, spending far too much time on Dictionary.com, sweating, wishing I could just give up, completely stop writing about music altogether.

An ulcer, surely, will be my eventual reward.

I’d much rather take a closer look, delve a bit, talk in specifics, let myself go and talk about the subtlety inherent in just one or two tracks, and let the rest fend for themselves.

And so, my dear Post-Rockists, welcome to today’s lecture.

Critics and fans are right to think that Wainwright’s music is baroque compared to his pop contemporaries, but that doesn’t mean that his music isn’t formulaic. I don’t mean that in a negative sense–all music is formulaic in the strictest sense of the term: Each composition is composed of forms that the musician has picked, forms derived from other works, derived from other works, derived from other works. And now that we have such a wealth of songs by Rufus, we can begin to make comparisons in form. Musically he is getting better and better, but he is still the same songwriter using the same tools and making many of the same musical moves.

Let us take “Not Ready to Love” from the new album and compare it to “The Tower of Learning,” from 2001’s Poses. Both songs have the same structure dynamically and aim for a climactic moment at almost the exact midpoint the song, when, lyrically, the entire narrative path turns. Really, they are the same song about the same thing, but in reverse.

Sounds vague, huh? Let me explain as best I can.

“Not Ready to Love” begins slowly, simply, and builds methodically, little by little. The volume builds, the instrumentation builds, and the lyrics build an argument, a plea that lets the listener know that, as the title intimates, he’s not ready to love. After the first time through the plea, a wary violin enters, followed by falsetto voices, the vocals convincing by way of repetition, that–again–he’s just not ready to love. More repetition of the line, then a teardropy piano, and more “I’m not ready to love”s, until, just around the middle of the song, the turn manifests itself.

This is a move Rufus uses every once and awhile, and we fall for it every time because–no matter who the songwriter–this move always breaks our hearts.

“I’m not ready to love.”
“I’m not ready to love.”
“I’m not ready to love.”

Ok, Rufus, we get it. We get it. You’re not ready to love. Ok, that’s enough. But, wait, what’s that?

“…until…”

(and he holds the “until” for a while, like a chess player who rubs the rook between his thumb and pointer finger for a few brief moments before making the move that he knows will result in checkmate)

“…I’m ready to love you the way you should be loved.”

And all of a sudden, a song about the inability to love becomes a vow, a promise not only to love, but to love only that one person, and to do it right. And the listeners are left feeling a little embarrassed for doubting, and a little dumbfounded, because we’ve fallen victim to one of the oldest musical tricks in the book.

But, ah, the sentiment is so bright, so smooth, so pure. Butterflies rise from the stomach to the upper chest and shoulders, sending chills right back down the spine. The vow is lifted musically, as by some invisible hand, is ensconced in warmth, gradually lowered to the ground, let go, and left safe.

“The Tower of Learning” does exactly the same thing, only the complete opposite. It’s the same trick–building the intensity slowly and submerging the listener in a story that is taking a clear course toward an outcome we all expect. In this case, of love to be yearned for (”learning” rhymes with “yearning”), sought, and found. And, again, right around the very middle of the song, Rufus dramatically reverses the course of the story. This time, we get rejection and the subsequent experience of pain left in its aftermath.

“I saw it in your eyes, what I’m looking for,” sung several times over, becomes, when the music is at its fullest moment, “You smashed it with your eyes, what I’m looking for.”

And like a balloon that may climb slowly, little by little, towards the clouds, the singer is pricked by some dangerous object, just slightly, but fatally, and begins a descent earthward, just as slowly, little by little, as he was lifted when heavenbound.

It’s quite a statement for Rufus to construct a song like “Not Ready to Love” out of the same structure as “The Tower of Learning,” and is a sophisticated and subtle way to reveal through his art that he’s in a better place than he was six years ago. In “The Tower of Yearning,” the narrator’s hopes depend entirely on the beloved. In “Not Ready to Love,” Rufus is the one in control. He holds the cards, and will deal a favorable hand when the pot is good for the taking.

–Posted by Scotter