Martha Wainwright, in her own right

New Statesman​

4 hours ago

'Though I was a 'daughter of' twice over, doors seemed closed to me,' writes Martha Wainwright in her 2022 memoir Stories I Might Regret Telling You, recalling the difficulty she had getting her music career off the ground in the late Nineties. Wainwright – the daughter of the American songwriter Loudon Wainwright III and the Canadian folk artist Kate McGarrigle, and the younger sister of the singer and composer Rufus Wainwright – was born into a family renowned for its musicality. Yet far from the ease with which some might have expected her to glide into stardom, Wainwright found these associations worked against her. This was in 'stark contrast to the attention paid to the 'sons of' musical stars', she writes, naming 'all those boys' she hung out with in New York and Los Angeles: Teddy Thompson (son of Richard and Linda), Sean Lennon (son of John and Yoko), Chris Stills (son of Stephen), Harper Simon (son of Paul).
Two decades on from that time, performing at London's Union Chapel in late May to mark the 20th anniversary of her self-titled debut album, Wainwright, now 49, is far from over this early push-back. After opening her set with 'Far Away', on which her voice retains the almost unbelievable balance of childish twee and adult gravel captured on the original recording, and 'GPT', named after Brooklyn's Greenpoint Tavern bar, she explains why it took her the best part of a decade finally to release this album in 2005. 'There was already a lot of Wainwrights in the room, and a couple of cute McGarrigles,' she says to laughs from the crowd – so the industry big shots weren't much bothered by her raw, untethered songs. How could she ever change that?
Martha Gabrielle Wainwright was born in New York State in 1976. Her parents were living in Woodstock at the time, but they soon separated, and Martha and Rufus moved with their mother to her native Montreal, where they grew up in a bohemian, folkish family. Wainwright is often asked if her parents 'made' her do music, she writes in her memoir, and the answer is yes. 'But I liked it and I wanted the attention and fun of performing. I was a misfit, and often unhappy, but singing and playing made me feel good.'
But she doesn't consider herself 'naturally gifted. I don't hear music in my head… I get intimidated.' No wonder, given her relatives. Loudon Wainwright (now 78) is a Grammy Award-winning songwriter of tracks that have become classics of Americana, including 'The Swimming Song' and 'Motel Blues'. Meanwhile Kate and her sister Anna McGarrigle (Kate died in 2010; Anna still lives in Montreal) are Canadian folk royalty: their self-titled 1976 record was Melody Maker's 'best record of the year', while The McGarrigle Hour (1998, featuring Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt) remains a stalwart of the modern folk canon. This musical prowess continued into the next generation: Rufus Wainwright signed to DreamWorks Records when he was 22, had hundreds of thousands of dollars poured into his 'artist development' and is now a household name for his baroque pop, as well as his soundtrack and opera work. 'Growing up, I never played the piano – how could I with my brother wailing away on it day and night?' Wainwright writes.
Numerous aunts and cousins of the Wainwright-McGarrigle clan are musicians too. At the Union Chapel, Martha's cousin Lily Lanken (Anna's daughter) sings backing vocals. But it wasn't just that her family all wrote and played songs; they wrote and played songs about each other – and no one was more candid than Loudon. Martha Wainwright's father was absent for much of her childhood, 'almost denying my existence', she writes. She portrays a man who instead of caring for his family wrote songs about them. When she was 14 and he was 44, Martha was sent to live with Loudon in New York City for 'a year of discontent'. His song 'Hitting You' is based on that year. Over lively guitar he recalls hitting Martha in the car when she was much younger, moving on to how he felt the need to hit her again: 'These days things are awful between me and you/All we do is argue like two people who are through/I blame you, your friends, your school, your mother, and MTV/Last night I almost hit you/That blame belongs to me.' It's brutal.
A decade later, Wainwright learnt that another of her father's songs, 'I'd Rather Be Lonely' – which she'd always thought was 'a bit stupid and mean-spirited', and probably about a girlfriend – was actually about that same year with her. She was in the crowd at a Loudon Wainwright concert, having opened for him, when he introduced the next song as being about his daughter, and proceeded to sing: 'You're still living here with me, I'd rather be lonely/All the time I look around/For excuses to leave town/Everybody wants somebody, but I'd rather be lonely.'
It's no wonder, then, that when Wainwright came to write, her songs burst out with a wily, frenetic energy, as though charged with resentment for her father's tunes and insistent on making their own mark. Many of the tracks from Martha Wainwright use unusual guitar tunings – 'what I thought were genius tunings,' she says at the Union Chapel, 'now it turns out they're just a pain in the ass' – a lot of piano, and rickety drums. On stage she introduces 'Ball and Chain' as a song of 'desperation, about wanting to be loved and desired', before giving in to its jangling intensity, anchored by her five-piece band. On the fan favourite 'Factory' she sings, 'These are not my people/I should never have come here,' with ferocity. Yet as the song goes on, her vocals, elsewhere hard edged, morph into a beautiful sloppiness, her vowels soft around these words as her body, too, finds an elastic effect, her legs bending and slinking below her guitar.
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If Wainwright's assertion of being withheld the full benefits of nepotism because of her gender is hard to swallow for those of us who will never have the luxury of benefiting from nepotism whatsoever, another of her declarations is undeniable: that unlike Loudon and Rufus, her career has been held back by motherhood. Wainwright is the mother of two teenage boys, their father her ex-husband and former producer Brad Albetta, who comes off particularly badly in the memoir. In London she plays an unreleased track, singing: 'I chose my children over my career/But I still have to feed them and they are dear/And that is why we are here tonight.' Further into the song, she reflects: 'I sound more like my father every day/But I can't call him on Father's Day.'
She is being at least partially comedic, the song a wink to the audience who know exactly who her father is – and that he writes about her too. All of this is, of course, part of the appeal. 'She's got her father's wit,' one woman behind me whispers, approvingly. But the song's point is potent: Wainwright is one of many women whose careers have not run as ascendant a course as they might have had they not paused to have children. That hits harder for Wainwright, given her absent father continued to garner renown as a prolific songwriter. Although her family patter occasionally feels like theatrical shtick, it ultimately lends a melancholia to Wainwright's performance, reinforcing her belief that she hasn't found proper success in the context of her family name. 'In so many ways, my career is a failure,' she writes in her memoir.
It's immensely sad, because these songs are fantastic. They are jagged, raucous, yet introspective things, and live, her unburdened stage presence and full-bodied guitar-playing makes them all the wilder. Martha Wainwright was acclaimed upon its release 20 years ago, but never placed higher than 63 in the UK charts, and 43 in the US. The six albums she has released since then have been similarly well received by critics without breaking through into the mainstream. But it is a feat to sell out a 900-capacity venue, in a country that is not your own, playing a record that's two decades old. Wainwright's cult listeners don't care that Rufus isn't there to join her on her rendition of her brother's song 'Dinner at Eight' (about Loudon, of course) – yet she still sounds apologetic when she tells them so.
They do, however, care for the single encore track, the rambunctious 'Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole', first released on an EP in 2005, included on the debut record, and now performed by Wainwright solo on acoustic guitar. It's the song that made her name, although she doesn't play it often any more. It is typically – and wrongly – described as a song about Loudon. Wainwright admits she once told a journalist it was about her father, which probably didn't help the matter. But really it is about the industry, about 'getting the short end of the stick' in her career, she writes – being that 'daughter of' rather than 'son of'. 'I will not pretend/I will not put on a smile/I will not say I'm all right for you/When all I wanted was to be good/To do everything in truth,' she sings, boldly and then softly. Martha Wainwright will always be a Wainwright. It is up to her whether she chooses to write like one.
[See also: Keir Starmer's grooming gang cowardice]
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