5/5 Sublime, Essential Live Record From Rufus Wainwright
  by RadioNDN (Midwestern USA)
If you're already a Rufus Wainwright fan, let me just save you some time and tell you this: Go out and get this now. It's a sublime and essential live record with Wainwright in top form. The set list featured here showcases songs from his last two studio albums, Want Two and Release The Stars, for the most part, and the live versions frequently eclipse the studio ones. (There's also a DVD version of this live set that features more songs.) If you happen not to be a Wainwright fan, then this is a good place to start if you are wondering what the hubbub about him is, as this is an excellent, exceptionally entertaining introduction to his unique brand of jazz, Big Band and Broadway influenced pop music, often experimental in nature, and featuring a heavy dose of old fashioned showmanship, the latter on full display on Milwaukee At Last!!! Wainwright also has a remarkable voice, known to some audiences owing to his superlative cover of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah." I'm not often a fan of live records, but this is Wainwright's second great live recording in a row, following his recreation of Judy Garland's famed 1961 Carnegie Hall concert, and it's definitely recommended. Standout cuts: "Going To A Town," "Rules And Regulations," "Not Ready To Love/Slideshow" and "Gay Messiah."

4/5 Off the Hook
  by Lee Armstrong (Winterville, NC United States)
Rufus Wainwright is an amazing performer. This live disc displays his strengths. The horns on the opener "Release the Stars" has one foot in ragtime and the other kicking in the air as Rufus' voice soars, "Old Hollywood is over." Flutes flourish at the opening of "Sanssouci" with Rufus' voice like a romantic travelogue. "Leaving for Paris #2" slows the tempo to a moody pace with what sounds to me like a bassoon punctuating the arrangement with its low pulsing vibrato. "Nobody's Off the Hook" has a conversational lyric and Rufus' gorgeous piano, "Haven't fallen down in awhile, sitting here walking the line, but that's okay because I have looked & nobody's off the hook." "Not Ready to Love/Slideshow" combines two tracks from Release the Stars into a 14-minute medley with Rufus' voice heartbreaking, "I'm not ready to fly." This live set provides excellent reworking of tracks from Rufus' studio set. Enjoy!

4/5 +1/2 -- Rufus Wainwright makes himself at home on stage
  by hyperbolium (Earth, USA)
Rufus Wainwright's performances have often been larger than a recording studio could fully capture. His cabaret-styled vocals and opera-sized emotion are more naturally at home on stage, and captured live they resound not only with unbridled emotion but with the interplay of a performer and his audience. His tour of the classic American songbook on 2007's Rufus Does Judy at Carnegie Hall is now eclipsed as a live document by this tour through eight original compositions and covers of Noel Coward's "If Love Were All" (borrowed from the Garland set list), and the early twentieth-century Irish love song "Macushla." Wainwright draws his own material almost entirely from 2007's Release the Stars, closing the album with 2004's "Gay Messiah." His measured, emotional vocals hold down center stage, supported by rock band arrangements that would sound at home in a stage theater's pit. He soars up and dips down with glissandos, reels listeners in with intimately quiet sections, and drives his lyrics home with dramatically held notes. The dynamic range speaks to both his talent as a live performer, and the raptness with which his audience is willing to pay attention. The result offers a great deal more delicacy, nuance and power than the average live album, and it provides a startling accurate portrayal of Wainwright's magic. 4-1/2 stars, if allowed fractional ratings. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]