Come Home to Mama

“There are fewer and fewer people to complain to/ so I built a ship of shit and directed it to you,” Martha Wainwright sings on “Can You Believe It,” the second song on her third record, her voice a wry curl. This is no apology song (that would be the simmering opening track, “I’m Sorry”), more like a monument to her own capacity for churlishness and her partner’s ability to bear it. Come Home to Mama is Wainwright’s first record since she gave birth to her first child and lost her mother, the folk singer Kate McGarrigle, within the span of a few months in 2009 and 2010, and the ironies of those concurrent milestones figure heavily into her lyrics here, alternately searching and celebratory, casting wide nets of existential despair and fixating on domestic minutia. This, plus the kitchen-sink instrumental production (horns and strings, beeps and bloops; “I Wanna Make An Arrest” even borders on a disco boogie), leads to a few moments of tonal and textural whiplash. But maybe that’s how life seems when you’re grappling with suddenly becoming the one doing the calling-home, never again to be called home yourself. The high point of the record, and… read more »