Rufus Wainwright
National Concert Hall, Dublin
★★★★☆
It’s the birthday drama Rufus Wainwright could have done without. On the night he turns 50, the acclaimed singer-songwriter leads his band out to the strains of the sold-out audience chanting “happy birthday”.
But later, he has a minor existential crisis when audaciously attempting to turn folk ballad Arthur McBride, made famous by Paul Brady, into a mini-operetta on piano.
He trills and emotes until the rush of lyrics gets away from him. His honeyed lilt has become a melancholic mumble. Wainwright is wobbling on a high wire, and you can feel gravity calling him earthward.
The crisis is as much one of fashion as music. Wainwright and his ensemble sport matching monk’s habits that make them look like a crooning cult. Yet these wrinkles, sonic and sartorial, merely underline the supremely uplifting nature of the rest of the evening.
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Wainwright’s new tour represents a wonderful departure. The set is mainly covers drawn from his beguiling recent collection of folk standards, Folkocacry (from which that deconstruction of Arthur McBride emanates).
He appears to appreciate the opportunity to rest his own songbook and delve into the music with which he grew up in Montreal, the son of acclaimed folkie Kate McGarrigle and gimlet-eyed troubadour Loudon Wainwright III.
Wainwright opens with Peggy Seeger’s lushly contemplative Heading For Home (on Folkocracy, a two-hander with John Legend). Next comes an old Hawaiian lullaby Kaulana Nā Pua, the lyrics to which he reads, very carefully, from a sheet.
He arrived in Ireland the previous day. Wainwright came here fresh from a pre-emptive birthday bash at the foot of a lighthouse in Montauk, where Jimmy Fallon, Liev Schreiber and Cynthia Nixon were among the attending celebrities. The jet lag still has the artist in its grip. It threatens to drag him under as he tackles the aforementioned Arthur McBride and is tackled right back by the tune.
Wainwright is best known for his glittering piano ballads. At the NCH, though, he’s more comfortable holding a guitar. Strumming languidly, he plunges into a dreamy version of the Mamas and Pappa’s Twelve-Thirty (Young Girls Are Coming to the Canyon).
He dips briefly into his own catalogue for Going To A Town, a melodramatic demolition of George W Bush’s presidency. That is followed by a new tune called Old Song (inspired by Kurt Weill). Alas, jet lag catches up with him again as he negotiates the dark and stormy Early Morning Madness.
However, birthday bliss is restored with the appearance of a cake garnished with candles (and wearing sunglasses). The set proper is closed with a thrillingly cheesy cover of the Dolly Parton-Kenny Rogers epic Islands In The Stream featuring backlist vocalist Petra Haden (sister-in-law to movie star Jack Black).
He encores with a tender take on Dylan’s Ring Them Bells. Then, stepping away from the mic, the band and audience join in on Scottish-Irish ballad Wild Mountain Thyme.
Those three words have become synonymous in Ireland with the car-crash Emily Blunt/Jamie Dornan movie of the same name. But as Wainwright guides the room through the chorus, all thoughts of rogue brogues and weaponised blarney melt away. In the process, a great gig ascends to the sublime.
