Martha Wainwright – Love Will Be Reborn (Cooking Vinyl)

Martha Wainwright has released her new album, Love Will Be Reborn. It’s been five years since Martha’s previous studio album and there have been some hard times since then, but you can’t keep a good Wainwright down.

Since 2016’s Goodnight City, Martha Wainwright has gone through a messy divorce with husband/producer Brad Albetta, fought to see her children and moved back to her native Montreal which is where she recorded Love Will Be Reborn.

Holed up in her home town, Martha has come out of a dark time, one that found her sad, depressed and lonely.

So, what better time to make an album that is at once cathartic, angry and hopeful?

Surrounded by her touring band (Thom Gill/guitars & keys, Phil Melanson/drums &  Josh Cole/bass) and working with producer Pierre Marchand (Sarah McLaughlin/Rufus Wainwright) Martha has come out of this bruised, battered but with her heart still beating.

At age 45, most of go through a bit of a mid-life crisis especially when love and marriage tend to die on the vine…so the themes addressed in these 11 songs will strike many a universal audience.

“I cried one tear for us today, and I will wipe it away before the day breaks”.

That opening line from the title tracks sums it all up.

She’s down, but not out…like millions are these days.

Marchand’s production is supportive and it never gets in Martha’s way as she swoops vocally through a song like Report Card or the fevered dervish of Body And Soul where one moment she’s changing the locks the next dreaming of a tender touch.

“I was living alone, we all live alone”, Wainwright determines on Hole In My Heart…yet she still wants company…”you wanna live alone, together?” she offers.

The album fights its way to the end with a tense Rainbow precluding the lovely Falaise de Malaise.

This is not easy listening, but times are tough and Martha Wainwright sounds as though she has fought her way back out of the darkness with a collection of songs that serve as a light to the future.

Marty Duda

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