for people who can't read

Release The Stars | Rufus Wainwright
Geffen Records | 15th May

Review by Yoshua Wakeham

Website
Geffen Records
Buy

Sounds like … a soaring synthesis of country, big band, opera and Jeff Buckley.

‘I’m tired of writing elegies through boredom,’ Rufus Wainwright explains on ‘Sanssouci’, his voice hovering somewhere between Bernard Fanning and Matt Bellamy. ‘I’m tired of writing elegies in general.’ Perhaps that’s why Release the Stars is one of the brightest and most joyous albums of 2007.

I hadn’t listened to Wainwright before this album, and confess I was expecting something more indie – acoustic guitar, piano, melancholy, and little else. Instead, I was surprised by the lush, exuberant collection of songs, with nearly every track orchestrally underpinned. Whether it’s the horns on ‘Slideshow’ or the fantastic string canoodling on the awesome ‘Tulsa’, the orchestra adds genuine character to a set which occasionally veers towards boring.

Even when this tedium threatens though (‘Nobody’s Off the Hook’, ‘Rules and Regulations’, ‘Leaving for Paris No. 2’), every song manages to somehow kick off its earthly bonds and fly upwards into heavenly melodic reaches, if sometimes only fleetingly. These songs are not to be contained, and Wainwright goes with them, travelling breezily into the stratosphere and then back down again.

Wainwright’s cup of tunes seriously runneth over. Songs like ‘Between My Legs’ and the outstanding single ‘Going to a Town’ are positively brimming with beautiful harmonies and possess an appealing unhurriedness. Wainwright practically channels Jeff Buckley on ‘Not Ready to Love’, a smoky, faux-country ballad, and comes close to an alternative anthem with closer ‘Release the Stars’.

The only real weakness of the album is an intermittent tendency to repeat itself – but it’s hard to fault the album on that when there’s just so much to love. Release the Stars is food for the soul – and a nearly flawless piece of über-pop.

9 out of 10