Welcome to Chechnya - Metro Weekly - July 9 2020

Music
V. TONY HAUSER
Rufus Rules
Rufus Wainwright has created a straightforward, expertly crafted
work that neatly bookends the first half of his career. By Sean Maunier
DESPITE ITS TITLE, UNFOLLOW THE RULES IS ABOUT AS CLOSE TO A
conventional Rufus Wainwright album as you can imagine. Aside from “You
Ain’t Big,” a quick foray into country, he mostly cleaves to his signature brand
of piano pop, marked by orchestral flourishes and his characteristically languid vocals.
Its simplicity is intentional, meant to hearken back to his acclaimed debut album,
Rufus Wainwright, and introduce the next big chapter of his career, all part of his
longtime aspiration to get a late-in-life second wind (not unlike his fellow Montrealer
Leonard Cohen).
Just like that debut album, this is Rufus Wainwright at his most focused, playing
with a stripped back acoustic sound that sounds almost minimalistic compared to some
of his more exuberantly baroque albums. His cleverness as a songwriter, while it was
certainly evident from the beginning, has deepened over the years and Unfollow the
Rules (HHHHH) feels in many ways like a culmination of what he has learned along
the way. While the album boasts several strong tracks, it finds its peak on “Damsel in
Distress,” a stirring tribute to both the iconic Joni Mitchell and L.A.’s Laurel Canyon,
Wainwright’s adopted home.
Wainwright gives us a handful of memorable moments elsewhere
too, including the swaggering country-adjacent “You Ain’t Big,” an
ode to the real or perceived authenticity of Kansas, Alabama, and a
handful of other places that he conflates with one another. “Hatred” stands out for its
intensity, a notable outlier in an album that is otherwise more subdued. Wainwright
also allows us to see him gush a little on “Romantical Man” and its follow-up, “Peaceful
Afternoon,” which captures a prolonged joyous moment of domestic bliss, as the
normally artistically detached Wainwright gets explicitly personal, reflecting on his
relationship of 13 years.
Watch the Video for
“You Ain’t Big”
Unfollow the Rules is available to stream and purchase on July 10.
As much as Wainwright seeks and generally
achieves a certain timelessness with
his songwriting, the opening and closing
tracks feel very much of the present
moment. In the context of the pandemic,
the final track stands out as the most
sobering and thematically heavy track on
the album. Originally intended as a tribute
to those isolating in their homes to protect
themselves and others, “Alone Time” concludes
the album on a calming note after
the fraught tension of “Hatred.” The track,
released in April, features Wainwright
crooning soothingly over piano and choral
lines, “Don’t worry, I’ll be back,” a
phrase that took on extra weight when
Wainwright dedicated the song to COVID-
19’s dead and dying. As strange a moment
as this is to be releasing an album at all, it
is not lost on Wainwright that it’s an even
stranger time to be reaching for a late-career
second wind.
If Rufus Wainwright is unfollowing the
rules at all, he is doing so by subverting
the expectation that we might see him
come out with another
idiosyncratic project like
his recent operas, or his
2016 interpretation of
Shakespeare’s sonnets. Rather than experimenting
and breaking more rules of pop
music, he is instead breaking with his own,
handing us a straightforward, expertly
crafted work that neatly bookends the first
half of his career.
32 JULY 9, 2020 • METROWEEKLY.COM