Unrequited (Legacy)

As Loudon Wainwright points out in notes to this reissue of what was his final album for Columbia, the battle plan was to make a half-studio, half-live LP, the latter being where critics and fans felt the singer-songwriter did his best work. Unfortunately, Wainwright's desire to have it both ways failed on virtually all levels. Recorded in the mid-'70s as he was splitting from both his longtime manager and his wife (and then emerging performer) Kate McGarrigle, Wainwright sounds woefully adrift, especially on the genre-clashing studio tracks. The solo live cuts are a bit better, but psychosexual fantasies such as "The Untitled" (about an incest-filled visit to the YMCA by the Hardy Boys) and "Rufus Is a Tit Man" (about he and his then infant son co-breastfeeding) are about as unpleasant to hear as they are to describe. --Billy Altman