Here’s a track from Rufus Wainwright’s 2004 album Want Two that, like so many of his best songs, overflows with romantic longing. ‘Peach Trees’ finds Wainwright on a lonely stroll through New York City, wishing to see a lover who is either absent or non-existent.
Looking back, I’m tempted to say the Want project — which consisted of two albums released a year apart — was the last great work Wainwright released. I need to revisit the three pop albums he put out over the next 16 years to remind myself how they stack up.
In fact, I think I’m due to revisit Wainwright’s whole catalog from the beginning. It’s been a long time since I sat down and listened to one of his albums start to finish, something I used to do all the time in the early 2000s.
Or being held in one’s opium gaze
Under the peach trees
There I’ll sit and wait
Is true love a long walk through Bryant Park
Or bein’ held in the month of May
Under the peach trees
Under the peach trees
Under the peach trees
There I will be
Will be until you come and get me
‘Cause I’m so tired of waitin’ in restaurants
Readin’ the critics and comics alone
With a waiter with a face made for currency
Like a coin in ancient Rome
And I really do wish you were here next to me
‘Cause I’m going to see James Dean
There I will be
Oh under the peach trees
Under the peach trees
Under
Under
Under the peach trees
With him
Meet Me In Montauk 
….back when you were more of a melancholy kind of guy 🙂