Lightening Up

Considering Rufus Wainwright's ambivalence towards all things mainstream and an upbringing that had him touring with the family band alongside sister Martha as a teenager, one can never quite tell what form the precocious artist might explore next. Thus far he has penned seven studio albums of varying shades between decorative and sombre pop, recreated Judy Garland's fabled Carnegie Hall concert in lipstick and stilettos, and premiered his first opera.

This year the form of Wainwright's choosing is an out-and-out pop collaboration with celebrated producer Mark Ronson titled Out Of The Game, an exercise in lightening up. “I've had over the last three years the most dramatic and devastating and also fulfilling time of my life,” says Wainwright in explanation of the return to his project proper. “I mean between my mother's death and the birth of my daughter and writing an opera and being engaged and so forth, I've really run the gamut in terms of what the human experience has to offer.

“And my work kind of reflected that for a while you know, whether it was [sixth album, All Days Are Nights:] Songs For Lulu or putting Shakespeare sonnets to music or whatever, so I was doing a lot of work in that very deep end of the pool of existence, and now for this album, I needed a break – I needed to just lighten up a bit and have fun and enjoy the moment a little bit more without this kind of frame of intensity. Nonetheless, I mean it's still, I think there's still some fairly intense moments on my new record – I've never been totally able to shed the romantic Rufus – but the goal was to lighten up a bit.”

The title track of Out Of The Game does precisely that as Wainwright builds up repeated cries of “Look at you” before launching into the triumphant, chorus-backed insult “Suckers!”

“It's definitely sharp, you know,” he chuckles, typically wry. “At the beginning the suckers are like other younger people that just haven't had the experience and perhaps the failures that I have had and that we all have in life as we all get older, and so they just have this kind of naivety. It's not about charming naivety, it's about idiotic naivety and so they're just rolling around in that fashion, but then by the end of the song, I'm the sucker! 'Cause I'm the one who's getting kind of wrapped up in that whole question in general.”

In line with Wainwright's tendency to keep esteemed company as noted with the appearance of childhood friend Sean Lennon along with members of the Dap-Kings, Wilco, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Miike Snow on the record, Helena Bonham Carter lip-syncs along as a stuffy librarian who almost winds up baring all in the film clip accompanying Out Of The Game. “She's an old friend of mine,” explains Wainwright. “I've known her for many years. She's always game, what can I say! She's always game and she's also endlessly talented so you're not only dealing with an enthusiastic nincompoop, you're dealing with a genius!”

Though Out Of The Game more than hints at Wainwright's general distaste of viewing younger generations through the wisdom of his 39 years, it's by no means a suggestion that he is ready to give up the music game. ”I don't plan on ending my career until I pass away – I'm in it for the long haul, but I would say that there are these other avenues which have really opened up for me, be it in the opera, in the theatre or writing music for films.

“And now with the record industry collapsing and people not really buying CDs that much, and the whole kind of mechanism shifting gears, I am gonna have to get out of some kind of game in order to just survive, you know? So I think it's not about leaving necessarily but it is about making some sort of statement and finding where you're needed and where you will prosper. The music business right now is very treacherous and not an easy sell, as they say.”

Given the personal events in Wainwright's recent life, he has become more focused on figuring out exactly where he is needed, particularly outside of music, and despite giving off the air of a life-long suffer-for-your-art type, he is surprisingly pragmatic when it comes to getting the job done. “I just go in and complete whatever the work is at hand,” he admits matter-of-factly.

“I dunno, a lot of it has to do with not thinking so much and kind of just viscerally responding to this energy around you. And I've completed a lot of projects in my life; I've made seven albums, I did the Judy [Garland] tribute, I wrote an opera, I wrote a musical – all this stuff, so it seems to be a good system to not really think about it. Just do it!”

With this sentiment in mind, Wainwright and Ronson created Out Of The Game in record time. “That's been nice,” he says of working with the man-in-demand. “It was amazing, I mean he was a great producer to work with, he's also a lovely guy. And he is quite good looking as well – he's definitely the full package! I think what was best about the process was that it didn't take so much time – we worked at breakneck speed for about a month and boom, the album was done. It was really nice to experience that. I dunno, maybe especially since my mother passed away and I have a young daughter who's growing in leaps and bounds, you realise that time is so precious and the faster you can complete something the sooner you can just enjoy life – which I intend to do at some point, so Mark was helpful in that respect as well.”

Playing six theatre dates including Sydney Opera House on his upcoming Australian visit, Wainwright is particularly fussy about the setting of his live performances. ”For me the venue is everything in terms of performance. Over the last two years with all these different kinds of shows I've done I've realised that it's really the architecture of the space and the history behind it that will dictate what's going on. I think both the performer and the crowd react to that energy, so I'm very lucky because I have the best spots in the world to look forward to, coming out there.”

With a yawn, Wainwright signals his intention to head for bed as he's speaking in the midst of a European tour. He's tired, but grateful for his continued relevance following the release of Out Of The Game. “The tired that I have is one of joyful exhaustion because the shows have been going so well, and we did some festivals in Europe and played for hundreds of thousands of people and yeah, I'm just happy that I'm still worth someone's attention.”

Rufus Wainwright will be playing the following shows:

Saturday 8 September – Canberra Theatre, Canberra ACT
Sunday 9 September – Opera House Concert Hall, Sydney NSW
Wednesday 12 September – QPAC Concert Hall, Brisbane QLD
Saturday 15 September – Hamer Hall Arts Centre, Melbourne VIC
Monday 17 September – Her Majesty's Theatre, Adelaide SA
Wednesday 19 September – Riverside Theatre, Perth WA