MARTHA WAINWRIGHT | LIVE REVIEW

Tramshed, Cardiff, Thurs 26 Jan

Touring excellent new album Goodnight City, Martha Wainwright and her band, Toronto’s Bernice, who also serve as tour support and whose subdued electro-pop meets with warm approval, provide a packed-out Tramshed with a rousing set of old and (predominantly) new material.

It’s these newer songs that provide many of the highlights tonight, despite some occasionally clunky lyrics (Around The Bend, in particular, is awash with stinkers: “I used to do a lot of blow/ But now I only do the show/ I like to get paid/ I never get laid”). Memorable moments include the powerful ballad One Of Us, performed beneath stark red lights with just a piano for accompaniment, and the overdriven rocker So Down on which Wainwright, forced to compete with her band for volume, really opens up her throat and powers home the chorus.

Of the older material, we’re treated to a gorgeously delivered Bleeding All Over You , from 2008’s I Know You’re Married But I’ve Got Feelings Too, as well as a rendition of the first song Wainwright ever committed to tape, Year Of The Dragon – which is accompanied by one of many anecdotes she tells, of the family all pitching in to contribute to an album called The McGarrigle Hour.  Decked out in a grey jumpsuit, along with her band, the French Canadian is a natural performer, seeped in stagecraft from a young age and full of tales from her past. Such is her confident swagger, you get the feeling she could do this in her sleep.

Wainwright bounces from story to story between songs, the audience raptly attentive, as she talks about her family and gives often hilarious background to the concept behind Goodnight City: she invited a number of musicians “richer and more famous” than she to contribute songs, before realising that she could do a better job than most of them and writing half of the record herself.

An encore of the Leonard Cohen classic Chelsea Hotel and Proserpina, delivered with the versatile members of Bernice providing vocal harmonies, leave the night on a high, with Wainwright departing to whoops and waves of applause.

words and photos HUGH RUSSELL