FEATURE:
Vinyl Corner
Martha Wainwright - Goodnight City
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WHEN thinking about an album…
PHOTO CREDIT: Carl Lessard
to include in Vinyl Corner this week, I realised that I had not included Martha Wainwright before. I wanted to include this album, because it is one of her more underrated albums. Guest contributors include novelist Merrill Garbus, Glen Hansard, Michael Ondaatje, Beth Orton, and members of the McGarrigle and Wainwright families. Goodnight City is an album that I would recommend people get on vinyl. It is a terrific listen that got some good reviews. Even though not everyone was on board, the general vibe from people was positive. I like the fact that there are other writers on the album. It doesn’t make Goodnight City less personal or fractured. Instead, you do get this nice blend of sounds and directions that hangs together well. I have been listening back to Goodnight City a bit lately, and it is an album that contains some of Martha Wainwright’s best songs. She has said how the other writers did seem to tap into her life. Wainwright changed bits here and there so, essentially, it seems like the songs were written by her. There is a lot to enjoy and recommend when it comes to Goodnight City. As I do with albums I feature in Vinyl Corner, I want to bring in a couple of reviews for Goodnight City. The first review I want to bring in is from The A.V. Club. This is what they had to say in their review:
“There have long been two sides to Martha Wainwright’s musicality: the singer-songwriter of her own distinction and the master interpreter of song. In the four years since her last solo effort, she’s seemingly emphasized the latter, playing the standards as a lounge singer in the Emmy-winning Olive Kitteridge; covering the work of Canadian songwriters (even translating her own) for the TV series Trauma; and releasing an album of family lullabies and folk covers with sister Lucy Wainwright Roche. Her latest, Goodnight City, merges these two sides, with inspired performances of both her own new work and contributions by writers as diverse as author Michael Ondaatje and Tune-Yards’ Merrill Garbus.
Goodnight City starts off in familiar enough fashion. Lead single “Around The Bend” is the kind of raw folk Wainwright is known for, with frank admissions—“I used to do a lot of blow”—delivered in her beautifully unruly vocal style. But by the second song, Wainwright reveals this record’s life force, its tonal departure from past work. “Franci” is a downright buoyant declaration of love for her youngest son: “Everything about you is wonder,” she sings, relishing in simply repeating his name. Goodnight City, while every bit as emotionally cathartic and complex as previous records, is markedly lighter and more outward looking. And almost everything comes back to Wainwright’s children.
Her two young boys seem to have helped Wainwright move through the loss of her mother in 2010, a devastation that understandably dominated 2012’s Come Home To Mama. The theme of motherhood inevitably carries through to Goodnight City, but much of its anguish has been replaced by optimism. On the affecting “Traveller,” her sons bridge the two: “You’re alive / You’re alive,” Wainwright sings of her mother, “In those children’s eyes.”
A great deal of Goodnight City’s lightness comes from Wainwright’s dauntless experimentation with genre. Fevered rocker “So Down” rages with full-on New York glam, while the dark, cosmic twang of Beth Orton contribution “Alexandria” calls to mind Wrecking Ball-era Emmylou Harris. The lively, bass-driven shuffle of “Take The Reins” nods to its writer (Garbus) while offering Wainwright fresh territory to explore with a stirring falsetto. With few missteps (the clichéd “One Of Us”), Wainwright and her band have found interesting arrangements to showcase her incredible range as a performer. She gives herself over to each challenge completely, inhabiting a variety of aesthetics and personas that deserve album-length explorations all their own.
But these are less personas than they are very real aspects of a multifaceted artist. The many perspectives on Goodnight City add up to a dynamic record that speaks to the power of letting others—be they family, friends, idols, alter egos—help pull us out of and realize fuller versions of ourselves. The cover of Goodnight City shows the artist looking two ways at once, clearly in transition, and Wainwright’s experimental spirit here suggests an exciting way forward”.
The Line of Best Fit note how, even though there are a few missteps on Goodnight City, the album is a definite step in a positive direction for Martha Wainwright:
“Her debut EP, Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole, dealt in the intensely personal and the viscerally emotional, but when she followed it up with a self-titled full-length in 2005, things were poppier, airier and palpably more mellow. It was her second LP three years later that felt like the point at which she’d properly matured, setting the wit and insight of her earlier work against lusher production and sharper arrangements. Far from continuing in the same vein, though, Wainwright took a left turn, following I Know You’re Married But I’ve Got Feelings Too with a tastefully-done live album of Edith Piaf covers a year later.
As terrific a showcase for Wainwright’s vocal ability as that record was, the beginnings of an identity crisis seemed to be manifesting themselves on her third album proper, Come Home to Mama, a wildly diverse piece of work that swung from deep intimacy - the title was plucked from “Proserpina”, a version of the last song Wainwright’s mother wrote before she died - to ill-advised electro-pop (“Black Sheep”, “Can You Believe It”). The intervening years - as well as last year’s pleasantly breezy collaborative effort with her half-sister, Lucy Wainwright Roche - seem to have served as a palate cleanser; LP4, Goodnight City, harks back to the accomplished tone of I Know You’re Married But...
Not that Wainwright’s done things by the book. Only half of the 12 songs on the record are her own compositions; the rest have been written by or with close collaborators, including brother Rufus, Beth Orton and Glen Hansard. The album’s triumph lies in its cohesion, especially given the disjointed nature of Come Home to Mama; you get the sense that Wainwright was happy, here, to bend the songs she didn’t write to her own specification rather than run with the blueprint she was handed. “Look Into My Eyes”, a co-write with her aunt, Kate McGarrigle, and cousin, Lily Lanken, is a case in point, taking a slew of different ideas that shouldn’t really work together - fluttering synths, smoky saxophone and lyrics that flit between English and French - and melding them together to dramatic effect. Similar ideas are in play on Orton’s contribution, “Alexandria”; snatches of sinister brass and a consistently ominous piano generate a stormy atmosphere that Wainwright matches all the way with a swaggering vocal turn.
There are missteps, particularly “Take the Reins”, a weirdly subdued blues-folk turn that proves not even Wainwright can shine much light on the baffling acclaim that the track’s writer, Merrill Garbus of Tune-Yards, seems to garner from all corners. Those moments are few and far between, though, and most promising on Goodnight City is what a leap forward it represents from Come Home to Mama in terms of Wainwright nailing stylistic variation on her own cuts, from the gorgeous, country-flecked opener “Around the Bend” to the simmering tension of “Window”. Her most polished record to date, in every sense of the word”.
Maybe not the very best Martha Wainwright album (perhaps her 2005 eponymous album takes that honour), 2016’s Goodnight City is a really interesting and engaging album with some excellent tracks. If you have not heard of Martha Wainwright or are not sure where to start, I feel Goodnight City is a fine place to begin. I would recommend people check out Goodnight City on vinyl, as it is…
A brilliant album.