Rufus Wainwright - Unfollow the Rules

The Guardian 80

(BMG)
Wainwright’s 10th studio album is a lush, engaging study in domestic bliss

After almost a decade working in other fields – most notably on his second opera and a project putting Shakespeare’s sonnets to music – Rufus Wainwright has recorded his first straightforwardly pop album since 2012’s Out of the Game. Whereas that record, produced by Mark Ronson, was immersed in 70s soft-rock sounds, Unfollow the Rules marks a welcome return to the opulent orchestration of Wainwright’s early albums.

There’s a genuine sense of contentedness here. Peaceful Afternoon, written for his husband, Jörn Weisbrodt, is an irresistible, guitar-driven paean to domestic bliss (“Between sex and death and tryin’ to keep the kitchen clean”), while the tender My Little You is addressed to Wainwright’s now nine-year-old daughter, Viva. There’s humour, too: Bexhill-on-Sea does not feature much in music folklore, but an encounter there with some over-enthusiastic female fans was the source material for This One’s for the Ladies (That Lunge!), a sumptuous ballad. Elsewhere, he takes lyrical inspiration from Anna Wintour, Joni Mitchell and forgotten statues in west London.

Pitchfork 69

Rufus Wainwright’s first original album in eight years isn’t so much a reinvention as an opulently crafted highlight reel, a career-spanning sampler of the singer’s many styles and guises.