Album Releases: Week Commencing 05/04/10: Album of the week

Rufus Wainwright - All days are nights: Songs for Lulu

This is a beautiful album. Put in its simplest form All Days is just Rufus sat behind a piano playing very proficiently using his pitch perfect voice to lay on the emotion. The album was written and recorded just a few weeks after his mother's death after a lengthy cancer battle and the sorrow he is feeling comes through. Throughout the album you can picture Wainwright alone in a large performance hall, playing his heart out with tears streaming down his face. Martha is a upsetting piece about calling his sister while waiting for his mum to die, its horrible subject nature is changed into a thing of wonderment when accompanied by exquisite piano. It's not just sorrow from Wainwright's perspective though he takes a break half way through to set some Shakespeare sonnets to music. Wainwright doesn't really improve the sonnets and actually somewhat detracts from them with his playing. But there is a melancholic beauty to almost every song with the album closer Zebulon the perfect mournful finish to a great album.

Top Tracks: Zebulon, Who are you New York?
If you liked this try: Dresden Dolls - Yes, Virginia

Jonsi - Go

That voice is one of the most recognisable voices in music today, or maybe ever and it now has a solo album sung in mainly English to show what kind of lyrics Jonsi can write. The fact Sigur Ros' lyrics are mostly in Icelandic means the voice has the same effect as a guitar to most but now the voice must be used to project a message. On the whole Jonsi's voice is so high it is almost indecipherable but when he does sing slow and low enough to hear the lyrics I was left feeling somewhat under whelmed. The lyrics could never match the whimsy of the music but I was expecting a little more. That isn't to say Go is a bad album, it really isn't, it's just underwhelming. When Jonsi veers away from the normal Sigur Ros style the album shines, Tornado is a haunting ballad while Around Us is as close to dance music we are going to see from Jonsi. His voice is impossible to get past it overpowers every note and it may not have the power of Jeff Buckley or the melancholy of Thom Yorke's pipes but it makes up for it with its child like innocence and tranquillity.

Top Tracks: Go Do, Tornado
If you liked this try: Sigur Ros - Takk..