Rufus Wainwright's French-language EP trades orchestral excess for sparse arrangements that expose genuine emotional vulnerability. Recorded with producer Pierre Marchand, the five songs—three originals and two standards—represent his finest work, letting his distinctive voice anchor intimate late-night meditations rather than theatrical spectacle. Essential for anyone who thought they'd heard what Wainwright could do.
⚡ Quick Answer: Rufus Wainwright's French-language EP "Vu" represents his finest work, trading his typical orchestral maximalism for sparse, intimate arrangements that let his voice shine. Recorded in Montreal with producer Pierre Marchand, the five songs—three originals and two French standards—showcase genuine emotional depth and restraint rarely heard in his catalog, particularly poignant given his mother Kate McGarrigle's participation before her death.
There is a version of Vu that exists only late at night, when the house is quiet and the wine glass is nearly empty, and that is the only version worth knowing.
Rufus Wainwright had already shown he could do grand things — Want Two arrived in 2004 draped in orchestral excess, emotionally exhausting in the best sense. Release the Stars, the album that preceded Vu by a few months in 2007, was his imperial phase in full bloom, forty-piece arrangements and gay-liberation theatrics and Antony Hegarty floating through the room like a beautiful ghost. Then Vu arrived almost as an afterthought, a French-language EP quietly slipped into the world that same year.
It is, quietly, the best thing he has ever recorded.
What the French Does
The title is a play on déjà vu, and the EP leans into that sense of something half-remembered. Wainwright sings five songs in French — three originals and two classics — and the language does something to his voice that English rarely permits. The camp is still present but the armor comes off. He sounds less like a performer and more like someone who wandered into a late Parisian session and stayed too long.
The originals include “Complainte de la butte,” which he had already recorded for the Moulin Rouge! soundtrack, recast here with more care. His takes on Édith Piaf’s “La complainte de la Seine” and the Charles Trenet standard “La mer” are not impersonation — they are Wainwright genuinely inside the songs, which is a different and rarer thing.
The production is spare by his standards. Pierre Marchand, the Montreal producer best known for his long collaboration with Sarah McLachlan, handled the sessions. Marchand’s instinct here was to pull back — less orchestration than a Wainwright record has any right to contain, more space for the voice to land in. The piano is close-miked and dry. The strings arrive like weather, not architecture.
The Session
Recording took place in Montreal, which made sense. Quebec gave the project a local legitimacy that London or New York wouldn’t have, and Wainwright’s family roots there — his mother Kate McGarrigle, his aunts, the entire McGarrigle dynasty — meant the French sat naturally in his mouth. Kate McGarrigle played on the record. She died of cancer in January 2010, and knowing that now gives certain moments on Vu a weight they didn’t have on first listen.
There is something about hearing a mother and son work through chanson together, unselfconsciously, on a record this small.
The string arrangements were handled with remarkable economy. Nothing overstays its welcome. In a catalog that can sometimes mistake maximalism for emotion, Vu proves Wainwright always had the restraint — he just rarely chose to use it.
Why This One
I came back to this EP recently after years away from it. I put it on while cleaning up after dinner and just stopped moving somewhere around “La mer.”
That is the test, I think. Not whether it holds up analytically, not whether it fits neatly into any critical narrative about the artist’s development. Whether it stops you cold when you weren’t expecting it to.
Vu stops you cold.
It is twenty-three minutes long. It asks nothing of you except that you sit with it. In a year when Wainwright released a full album of enormous ambition, this slight and almost private thing is what I keep returning to, the way you return to a photograph you almost forgot was in the box.
Further Reading
🎵 Key Takeaways
- 🎭 Vu trades Wainwright's orchestral excess for sparse arrangements that let his voice breathe, proving restraint was always available to him—he just rarely chose it.
- 🇫🇷 French removes the camp armor from Wainwright's persona, turning him into someone genuinely inside the songs rather than performing them—particularly on Piaf and Trenet standards.
- 🎹 Producer Pierre Marchand's close-miked piano and weather-like string arrangements create remarkable economy across 23 minutes, a radical departure from the 40-piece orchestrations of Release the Stars released months earlier.
- 👥 Kate McGarrigle's participation on the record acquired devastating weight after her 2010 death, adding intimacy to what was already Wainwright's most restrained family collaboration.
What's the difference between Vu and Wainwright's other releases from 2007?
Release the Stars, released months before Vu, represented Wainwright's imperial orchestral phase with 40-piece arrangements and theatrical maximalism. Vu is essentially the inverse—a 23-minute French-language EP with sparse production that proved he possessed restraint but rarely deployed it.
Who produced Vu and what was their approach?
Montreal producer Pierre Marchand, known for his long work with Sarah McLachlan, stripped back Wainwright's typical arrangements. Marchand favored close-miked dry piano and strings that arrived sparingly, letting the voice dominate rather than disappear into orchestration.
Does Wainwright impersonate the French standards on Vu?
No—his readings of Édith Piaf's 'La complainte de la Seine' and Charles Trenet's 'La mer' are genuinely interior performances, not impersonations. The French language appears to strip away his performative camp, revealing something more vulnerable underneath.
Why does the Kate McGarrigle participation matter now?
She died of cancer in January 2010, years after recording Vu. Knowing this retroactively transforms the record from a slight side project into an unselfconscious mother-and-son chanson session that gained unintended poignancy through her death.
Further Reading
Further Reading