'Everything I like is a little bit stronger, a little bit thicker, a little bit harmful for me." So croons Rufus Wainwright on "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk," the opening cut from his new album, "Poses."

Only a young man whose profession requires him to plumb his own depths would talk about his appetites in such an offhanded way. With his colorful pedigree and offbeat musical influences (Porter, Schubert, Callas), Wainwright already has a head start in the meaningful-subtext department, and that's not even counting the gay Chelsea thing, which, political correctness notwithstanding, is as central to his still-developing oeuvre as his "fetching red leather jacket" is to his self-image.

Though success hasn't gone to Wainwright's head, it's definitely made him more aware of what he can get away with, and what often seemed like reluctant attitudinizing on his debut, comes off here as a fully formed pop sensibility. The languorous vocal style that characterized "Rufus Wainwright" has been institutionalized on "Poses," lending even a funky song like "Shadows" the atmosphere of a dissipated Sunday afternoon spent in the company of the model he met the night before in "California" ("so much to plunder"). He's even gotten up the nerve to dip into the family cookie jar, reeling off a straightforward folk version of his father's 1984 song "One Man Guy," which is not a gay double-entendre, though I'd like to think that Rufus wants us to think it is. And if subtext is all you're looking for, he shares the vocal and instrumental chores on that one with sister Martha and guitarist Teddy Thompson, another product of a famous folk-rock couple (Richard and Linda Thompson) that split when he was just a kid.

Before signing to Chelsea and Dreamworks, Wainwright was living and writing his chamber pieces on the bilingual outskirts of Montreal -- "this munchkin land up north," as he so quaintly puts it. And while he certainly doesn't renounce that past or that place, the one sentiment that soars above all the others on these songs is joy at his sudden good fortune, not so much because he can "get drunk and wear flip-flops on Fifth Avenue," but because he can still enjoy those cigarettes andthat chocolate milk. "No longer boyish," he admits, "made me a man, ah but who cares."

Not to rain on Rufus' parade, but I would strongly advise him to give a listen to the new album by another Canadian singer-songwriter, Ron Sexsmith, if only to get a fuller perspective on his prospects. Sexsmith is older than Wainwright, but not by a lot, and, as far as I know, he still lives in Toronto. He was never demonstrative about his Cinderella success (he had no lineage advantages), but the solid craftsmanship of his output over three albums proved that he was grateful to have the opportunity to make records. Sexsmith's songs were personal only in the sense that they all obviously sprung from the same intellect. If he was writing about himself, he did so obliquely.

He's still being indirect on "Blue Boy," but there's an underlying bitterness running through all 15 cuts that was missing from his previous songs. "And he tried so hard to be the best he could," he sings plaintively on the reggae-inflected "Never Been Done," "but in his father's eyes it was always disappointing." In the past, Sexsmith's seamless melodies deflected the listener's attention away from the singer and back into the song. "Blue Boy" seems more perverse, almost petulant. As he puts it plainly in the opening cut, "This Song," he no longer believes (as Rufus still does) that music hath charms to soothe the savage beast, otherwise known as life.

Sexsmith's other records were immediately accessible because that was their design. Thanks to Steve Earle's occasionally muddy production, "Blue Boy" makes you work for its rewards, which in the long run are many and varied: the jingle-jangle desperation of "Don't Ask Why," the torchy sentiments of "Foolproof," the loser posing as a smartass in "Not Too Big." Just as Rufus seems to be arriving at a place he can call home, Ron is moving out of his comfortable niche. "God bless this cheap hotel," he sings, determined but a little scared.