RUFUS WAINWRIGHT
UNFOLLOW THE RULES
BMG
★★★★
Sometimes on Rufus Wainwright’s ninth studio album it feels like being swaddled in a heavy pile shag rug on Cloud 9, chandeliers hanging from the heavens. For starters, there’s the way his voice gently trembles, like it’s massaging your earlobes, and how it frequently drags a fraction of a second behind the beat – not entirely unlike Guy Garvey’s – as though he’s still drowsy from an early afternoon nap. On the sweeping title track, he could almost be Judy Garland – a comparison in which he’ll revel, given his 2007 tribute to the star – and the song itself does indeed seem to drift off over the rainbow, accompanied by velvet swathes of strings, before returning for a dramatic curtain call. Then there’s his luxurious arrangements, which cocoon the loving sentiments of a song like Peaceful Afternoon, in which Wainwright celebrates 13 years with his partner, Jörn Wiesbrodt – confessing, in typically grandiose fashion, to having been “a fecund resource for anger” – or Early Morning Madness, in which his languid nature gives way to sadness, accompanied by lazy piano chords and sluggish percussion. But the electronically enhanced Hatred’s fury aside, the overall mood’s positive, not least as he recalls London on the nostalgic Romantical Man.