release date: Oct. 16, 2012
format: cd (Deluxe Edition)
[album rate: 3,5 / 5] [3,62]
producer: Yuka Honda
label: V2 - nationality: Canada
Track highlights: 1. "I Am Sorry" (live) - 2. "Can You Believe It" (4 / 5) - 4. "Proserpina" - 5. "Leave Behind" (live) - 8. "I Wanna Make an Arrest"
3rd studio album by Martha Wainwright following three years after her Piaf live album Sans fusils, ni souliers... (Nov. 2009) and 4½ years since her most recent studio album, the acclaimed I Know You're Married but I've Got Feelings Too (May 2008). The album is produced by Japanese-American artist Yuka Honda, who previously worked in the role of producer until 2000 for a limited number of artists, which also includes the debut album Into the Sun (1998) by Honda's then-boyfriend, Sean Lennon, and Wainwright's album here was apparently recorded in Sean Lennon's home studio. Sean Lennon plays bass on two of the standard album's ten tracks, and Honda is also credited on keyboards, synths and for drum programming on several tracks. The deluxe edition contains three demo recordings as bonus material.
The album is Martha's first since the passing of her mother Kate McGarrigle at the age of 63 in 2010, and several of the songs are said to be centered on the loss.
Come Home to Mama - whose title, by the way, is a line from the track "Prosperina" - is more the musically and stylistically natural extension to her most recent 2008 studio album, making it a more pure pop / rock, folk pop, and singer / songwriter release.
Aside from the song "Can You Believe It", the album doesn't offer definite hit material, but several quite fine compositions. Her 2008 album bore certain traces of inspiration from PJ Harvey, and here I think more of an influence from Kate Bush and / or Tori Amos that intrudes - and quite generally, I think it points to Wainwright's most evident artistic weakness. All of her albums seem to contain tracks that in some way show some form of admiration or inspiration from others - whether it's her parents' folk tradition, brother Rufus's puffed-up arrangements, or other role models' idiosyncrasies. And it both results in releases pointing in several directions (apart from her 2009 Edith Piaf live album), and at the same time takes the focus away from Wainwright's very own qualities. She's undoubtedly a skilled songwriter and she has a great voice, but her greatest gift has probably been to imitate anyone, and unfortunately, she still often falls into imitation rather than cultivating her own position.
Despite challenges, I think this album is her second best so far, and it's by no means uninteresting. The selected tracks here also show what she's capable of when she sounds most like herself.
[ allmusic.com 4 / 5 stars ]
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Note: A double CD tribute album Sing Me the Songs: Celebrating the Works of Kate McGarrigle in honor of Kate McGarrigle was released Jun. 2013 featuring a wide range of artists including Loudon Wainwright III, Jane and Anna McGarrigle, Sloan Wainwright (Loudon's sister), Rufus and Martha Wainwright on live recordings from four tribute concerts over three years from the first in Jun. 2010 in London, two concerts in May 2011 from New York and the last in Jun. 2012 from Toronto. The album contains 34 tracks, most of which were written and composed by Kate McGarrigle.
