Plan B – the archives 16: Martha Wainwright

From Plan B #6. I’ve always liked this article, mainly cos the interview didn’t exactly get off to a flying start…

Martha Wainwright
Martha Wainwright didn’t like me. I wasn’t sure about her. Difference is, I hadn’t made my mind up beforehand.
“Tell me a story about the last time you fell off your bicycle,” I ask, by way of opening gambit. It’s a trivial question, sure: but I don’t like to ask about famous friends or family members; I feel that it’s insulting to do so. Should have known better: Martha’s finest song – the single, ‘Bloody Mother F***ing A**hole’ (written about her dad Loudon Wainwright III: someone you’ve never heard but I used to venerate as a teenager for one crap, joke song ‘Dead Skunk In The Middle Of The Road’) – has the relevant letters blanked out on the CD so as not to cause offence. Should have known better: she looks like Mariah Carey trying to be Sheryl Crow, and covers The Rolling Stones’ ‘Street Fighting Man’ with all the passion of a cast-member of Sex And The City. Should have known better: the stand-out lyric from her debut album Martha Wainwright, eight years in the making, goes, “Oh I wish, I wish, I wish I was born a man/So I could learn how to stand up for myself”. Should have known better.
I didn’t.

Lazing back in her chair in the fancy café next to Brighton’s Komedia, she jolts awake: “Are you serious about this?” she asks, shortly. “This is not going to go well, because I’m not particularly clever or funny or…”
…or interested in being here. This isn’t a test. You don’t need to be smart to answer dumb questions: just a little interaction is required. Martha’s music is odd. It’s almost like there’s an artist struggling to break free of the productive restrictions she places round it. You can admire the craft: watching her perform live reminds me of Desperate Housewives, Ally McBeal, something with comedian David Cross in – one of those US shows full of tanned, cynical actors casually tossing one-liners aside. You appreciate them for their biting wit and sculpted performance but you know damn well this isn’t real life, it doesn’t engage like a Ken Loach film or Caroline Ahern sitcom.
This isn’t honesty. It’s an act.
“Shouldn’t we just talk about the record?” Martha asks. “I’d feel more comfortable talking about what everyone else wants to talk about.”
You mean journalists enjoy asking those stupid queries: about how she’s toured with her brother Rufus and met Bob Dylan (she claims he wanted to fuck her), how long it took to record the album, which of her family’s records she’s appeared on as a guest (her mother is Kate McGarrigle), that her songs are “deeply personal”. Jesus. Why not bypass the interview scenario altogether and give out one-sheets instead?
Let’s talk about the record: it’s great background music for when you’re otherwise occupied. Polished, glistening, resonant…the voice has enough twists and disarming turns to delight the room. ‘Far Away’ starts with a teasing lift from The Carpenters, and recalls the lilting joyfulness of Canadian singer Jane Siberry: ‘Factory’ borrows from Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours (tellingly, Martha praises the production values on that album over its actual songs): elsewhere there are nods in the direction of Frank Sinatra, Chrissie Hynde, ancient folk song and (gulp) Tori Amos. The record is excellent. It’s a shame that now, whenever I hear it, enjoyment is tempered by the memory of bassist/producer Brad Albetta’s onstage facial expressions, gurning during ‘Ball And Chain’ like he’s partaking in a bout of particularly strenuous love-making.
I look at these people on stage – 15 years my junior – and realise: even if I live to be 103, I’ll never be as adult as them.

OK. Let’s pretend I know little about you. I’ve never heard your brother, your mother…I like the record. That’s it. I like the record. OK. Go. Why did you start singing?
“What makes anyone want to sing?” she repeats. “I can sing. Obviously, I was born with an ability to sing, probably given to me genetically by my parents, and I love to sing and it sounds pretty good when I do sing. Knowing how to sing, and having it sound good when I did made me want to do it more, and then it became about expressing myself…”
Some people make records for attention: some because they’re so fucked up it’s the only way they can communicate with the outside world: some, because they’re think they’re going to get rich and famous. What about you?
“I do it partially for attention because I’m an insecure person who doesn’t quite know what her role is in life. I’m not doing this in my attic for the sake of my own satisfaction or therapy. Obviously, these songs are very autobiographical and I wrote them out of a need to express myself, but I also try to write the songs with a sense of poetry and musicality with the full knowledge I’ll be on stage presenting them to people. I’m not just doing them for myself. I want people to like me – but that doesn’t mean I change what I do to make people like me.”
OK. Right. Good. Reading her lyrics, Martha’s obsessed with sex, loneliness, the illusion of familiarity, the fact that men seem to get all the breaks in life (“And the boys they run faster/And they throw harder and get stronger” – ‘These Flowers’) and her own insecurity. It’s a very American record: self-obsessed like her dad, dwelling on problems sometimes created to compensate for a lack of real ones. It’s art as theatre. And, despite her protestations, this is songwriting as therapy: particularly the magnificent, scathing single that boasts sentiments any alienated, ignored child can relate to.
Do you need to be in a particular frame of mind before you write a song?
“For me – because I’m writing about my own particular experiences, not politics, or…”
She yawns, bored.
“…other people’s – I have to make sure all the sensories are fully opened and prepared to be massaged, even if it’s painful or difficult or painful.”

In fairness to Martha, I will say this. Everyone has off-days. Later, she indicates from the stage – while obviously trying to rouse herself – she’d had too much tequila the night before. There’s nothing worse than having to do an interview with someone when you don’t want to. (I should know.) Still. It doesn’t help me. All I have is this here 40 minutes, and I need to make the most of that.
Stung by her indifference, I turn to her hitherto silent colleague at the table, producer Brad (if I’d known then about his facial expressions I’d have refused to sit in the same room).
Did you have a clear idea of what you wanted the songs to sound like?
“Sometimes,” he replies. “Like in ‘Far Away’, she’d recorded it with a friend and I thought that version was really good but I heard a lot of background vocals. Sometimes it can take her a little while to get to a certain place.”
“A lot of these songs I wrote years ago,” Martha interrupts, “and it was a real challenge to keep myself interested while making this record: it wasn’t the funnest experience for me, but you have to find a way to recreate it every time. Sometimes you do have to change the person it’s about. A lot of time it’s to do with acting – that’s the entertainment side of it.”
“Martha’s a great actor,” laughs Brad.
“The thing I like best about live music is when you feel like you’re about to crash at any point,” she muses. “Otherwise it gets too…”

Food arrives. Prawns and salad and what looks to be slightly overdone garlic bread. Martha loosens up when I tell her that I’ve spent the afternoon cooking spinach and mushroom lasagne: “Maybe we should have come over to yours,” she exclaims. She offers me a good tip, making lemonade (the trick is to boil the sugar and water down to a syrup, with the lemons, and then add the chilled water). “Martha’s a great cook,” Brad comments. “She’d come down to the studio with bags of different ingredients. Her cooking is a lot like her singing – a lot of flavour.”
Nice.
“I like to invent foods: everything’s a fridge soup,” Martha says. “I’m on a French/Middle Eastern savoury tip right now: I use thyme – with chicken. I’m a big fan of paprika –you have to go easy on it. I use a lot of lemon, fresh, to counter my love for fatty foods.”
How would you describe your music?
She ponders: “Like a spicy…there are two things going on: a certain harshness and a fearful vulnerability, a softness. There’s not much in between. I don’t know where the vulnerability comes from. Being a girl…”
“That’s also a key ingredient in your family’s approach to music,” Brad suggests. “They’re very bold. Everyone puts themselves on the line.”
“Yeah, we used to get cut down very fast.” Martha smiles. “In a good way.”
Is honesty important to you in your songs?
“Totally,” she says emphatically. “I have songs that I’m too honest about and I don’t play them, because they’d hurt people. I look and I feel very emotional when I sing, and very exposed. I can’t just play. I have to drum up some feeling…”
She pauses.
“I’m revealing all my tricks,” she gently laughs, before adding. “They’re not tricks. As any actor will tell you, when you pick a certain method you do start to feel these emotions and it soon becomes incredibly dramatic. If the audience is not fully there, you still have to give them as much as you can because you want to walk away with some sense of satisfaction that you did a good job.”
Martha pointedly looks at her watch. Guess my time must be up.
“Do you have enough?” she asks.

Martha pointedly looks at her watch. Guess my time must be up.

“Do you have enough?” she asks.