Rufus Wainwright - Symphony Hall - April 22, '19

Rachel Eckroth opened from behind a slew of boards. Primarily a keyboardist she also built the songs on the fly through loops, drum tracks and vocoder. Her voice wasn't bad and neither were the songs but there also wasn't much to set her apart. I ended up closing my eyes to take in a chunk of the set and it worked just swell.

Rufus Wainwright
The band assembled on stage before Rufus' silhouette, top hat and all, fell onto the giant projection that backed the stage. In a striped suit he took to centre stage surrounded by a drummer (wearing giant over-ear protection), a bass player, two keyboardists including Rachel, and an older gentleman with white hair (dyed red and black like a crow had bloodied it by diving into him) who was the musical director for the show and excellent guitarist to boot. That booming voice filled the giant symphony hall with his signature sound as they played through a good selection of songs from his debut and others from the catalogue. Between the man and the ego he bantered about all the times he'd played this room and told interesting stories about his mother Kate McGarrigle, as well as Leonard Cohen (though not before Hallelujah, I will note). A highlight had to be telling the story of playing Joni Mitchell's 75th birthday party before launching into stand-out of the night, Both Ways, which he funnily lamented he didn't actually play for her because Seal stole that honour. He sang this after removing his jacket to reveal a dazzling and sparkly sleeveless golden shirt. "Pretty good for 45," he quipped. Seemingly part of the act now Rufus gave off a holy (or holier than thou?) presence, built up by having his tech not only bring his guitars when changing but also plugging them in for him. 

Following the intermission he came back in a similar manner but with the projection, the top hat and the jacket changed. The opener of Poses was the song I was here to see more than any other and he nailed Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk. Unfortunately for me it was all kinds downhill from there as the life of the set was lost as they stuck to the Poses track list and, good as it is, I'm not intimately familiar and it stagnated. Even the ridiculously large jacket made of a million jewels which he needed help taking off and replacing with a similarly adorned black one that covered the entire piano didn't spice it up that much. Following another hour plus in the second set alone they wrapped Poses and the set opened up again. A near standing ovation greeted his first departure though not all joined in. The entire band returned for one or two, including his version of Across the Universe which awkwardly saw a handful of fans (?) standing on stage with a candle but they failed to wave it when appropriate despite Rufus' prompting. It was a nice ending, no Hallelujah, but provoked another ovation perhaps larger than the first and the grand master left for good.