Some type of force is with him. Wainwright’s record is the kind of artful, oddball pop album the music business seldom bothers to produce anymore. Wainwright’s emotions have an adolescent intensity–from track to track, he threatens to throw himself into a river, hang himself in a doorway and hurl himself under stampeding bulls. Yet he’s a disciplined, inspired craftsman, able to wring big power out of tiny wordplays. ““I’ll pray to God this song will end happily,’’ he gasps near the close of one romantic travesty. If you had to put him in a camp, Wainwright belongs with eccentric classicists like Tom Waits, Randy Newman and Rickie Lee Jones, only with a modern, glam edge. He got help on his debut from some industry heavyweights: producer Jon Brion (Fiona Apple) layered on quirky instruments like castanets, chamberlin and tack piano. And legendary orchestrator Van Dyke Parks, who collaborated in the ’60s with Beach Boy Brian Wilson, supplied dense, playful string arrangements. Wainwright’s style, particularly his cotton-mouthed vocals, takes getting used to, but once you’re there, you’ll be a goner.
He certainly has the personality to match. We caught up with him at New York’s Kennedy airport, where he was en route from a vacation in London to his home in Montreal. He was the only person in the terminal with a bright red leather coat, green trousers, a purple carry-on and a suitcase the size of a steamer trunk. He parked himself in a T.G.I. Friday’s and chomped down an oozing bacon cheeseburger. ““Do you like this jacket?’’ he said coyly. ““It was, like, 800 pounds. That was why I had to leave London. I bought it and it was fun and exciting, and I thought, “I could do a lot more of this. I’ve got to get home’.''
Home in Montreal is a much safer place, financially speaking: Rufus stills lives with his mom, acclaimed folkie Kate McGarrigle. His father, singer-songwriter Loudon Wainwright III, divorced Kate and split the family when Rufus was young but still shows up at holidays. Rufus’s parents were supportive, but each was occasionally concerned. ““Dad was worried because my mother’s family allowed me to be totally an artist,’’ Wainwright says. ““He wanted me to mow the lawn, at least.’’ McGarrigle, meanwhile, became his most stringent critic. ““My mother was very tough on my songs,’’ he says. ““There was an element she perceived as being very florid, very into my own depression. She was aware that if I did this, I’d have to be damn good to pull it off. Otherwise I’d be singing in Holiday Inns–the little gay lounge singer.’’ Rufus absorbed all kinds of music: everything from Tin Pan Alley to Nina Simone to Maria Callas to David Bowie. Wainwright studied classical piano, but quit McGill University after two years. ““I was turned off by the factory aspect–and I don’t mean Andy Warhol–of turning out these cookie-cutter musical types,’’ he says.
Wainwright’s label, DreamWorks, is anxious to see if the pop world at large will gobble up his sweet excesses; Rufus, meanwhile, has his own pop-operatic ambitions. ““I know the direction I’m going,’’ he states with a flourish. ““Which is to be’’–here his voice drops to a whisper–““the next Gershwin.’’ Do you think teenage girls in the ’30s had crushes on him?
