LIKE HER BROTHER RUFUS, MARTHA WAINWRIGHT IS A REFRESHINGLY DIFFERENT FORCE IN MUSIC. SHE’S CURRENTLY FINISHING UP HER AUTOBIOGRAPHY, STORIES I MIGHT REGRET TELLING YOU – THE TITLE OF WHICH GOES A FAIR WAY TO CAPTURING HER PECULIAR APPEAL…  

Her most recent record, GOODNIGHT CITY (released late 2016), returns to the dynamic rawness of her earlier releases, though the perspective of motherhood is like the leaven in the bread throughout. Where previous works such as BLOODY MOTHER FUCKING ASSHOLE have been attractively blistering, there are moments of real balance and tenderness on GOODNIGHT CITY. It is often poignant, not least when Martha sings about her two sons or about the loss of her mother, folk singer Kate McGarrigle. In this new interview with The Mouth Magazine, ahead of a short run of UK dates, Martha discusses the record, and reflects on how motherhood affects her art – and vice versa…

KNOWING THAT WE WERE GOING TO TALK, I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO GOODNIGHT CITY QUITE A LOT. RIGHT BEFORE THIS CALL I WAS PLAYING THE SONG FRANCI. THE ALBUM VERSION IS A BEAUTIFUL SORT OF ‘TORCH SONG’, ALMOST… A TRIBUTE TO YOUR YOUNGEST SON. ACTUALLY, PARENTHOOD IS A RECURRING THEME ON THIS RECORD. THERE’VE BEEN MANY BEAUTIFUL SONGS ABOUT CHILDREN BY MANY WONDERFUL ARTISTS DOWN THE YEARS… I’M THINKING, OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD, OF BOWIE’S KOOKS…
Yeah, that’s a good one.

WAS IT A DIFFICULT SONGWRITING LINE FOR YOU TO STAY THE RIGHT SIDE OF – THE LINE OF RESISTING SELF INDULGENCE OR BECOMING REALLY TWEE? 
It’s pretty quickly revealed what FRANCI is about, but it does sound like it could be a love song between two young people, or a love song to a young girl or something. I think that was somewhat intentional. I think that a song like FRANCI doesn’t obviously come off as a song about a baby, at first. But yeah, it’s hard. As someone who writes very personal songs, which I’ve always done, to not write about this new love affair would be odd, you know?

I REALLY LIKE THAT DESCRIPTION OF PARENTHOOD – AS A ‘NEW LOVE AFFAIR’… 
Well, that’s kind of what it is. And I would say in all the songs about my kids (including FRANCI and also WINDOW, which is about my eldest son) there’s like a love song in there. But there’s also actually a warning. The very first song I wrote about my first son was like that. It was on COME HOME TO MAMA, my last record, back in 2102. EVERYTHING WRONG is a song about me doing everything wrong…

DO YOU FEEL THAT YOU DID?
Well, there’s a lot of fear in new parenthood. There’s a lot of worry about everything. You want to do the best that you can do, but there’s also this sort of a desperation there, as well as love for your children. Really, you’re scared for them, you know?

I THINK THERE’S SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL ABOUT YOUR WRITING, HERE, WHICH I WOULD SAY IS IN COMMON WITH ALL OF YOUR PREVIOUS WRITING… YOU COULD HAVE, IF YOU’D WANTED TO, ‘PERFECT THE TRUTH’… YOU COULD ‘PERFECT YOUR MOTHERHOOD’. BUT I SUSPECT THERE WAS VERY VERY LITTLE AIRBRUSHING, WHICH IS EXTREMELY COMPELLING…
That’s very kind of you. Thank you. In the past I’ve got into trouble from people. I’ve written very personal songs and mentioned people, and got into trouble with them for mentioning them. So with the first song on the record (AROUND THE BEND, which isn’t about kids) I was trying an exercise, to see if I could write something from the point of view of another person. I’d seen this woman on the street who looked like she was a prostitute, so I’d thought “Why don’t I try and write from her point of view?” – and that’s sort of how that song starts… But, you know… I’m… I’m…

… FUSED BACK INTO IT?
Yeah! And very quickly, too, ha ha… So it ends up being about me – and I guess I thought “Well, that’s just what I know“. So it’s that side of me, I end up writing as a more extreme version of myself. It’s my inner prostitute, I guess…

… HA HA… OR PERHAPS YOUR GREAT EMPATHY AS AN ACTOR, AS AN OBSERVER OF CHARACTER? 
Yeah. That’s good. I like that.

THE OPENING LINES OF THAT SONG ARE PRETTY GRIPPING… “I’VE BEEN GOING ROUND THE BEND / I’VE BEEN TAKING LOTS OF PILLS AND THINGS”… TYPICALLY BOLD – AND, I GUESS, THAT BOLDNESS, THAT LACK OF FEAR, IN YOUR WRITING IS ESSENTIAL TO YOU…
Yeah. And in that song people can take that literally or they can not take that literally. Whatever… It’s just fun to have fun with words. It can be fun to blur things, to exaggerate or not exaggerate or… whatever, you know?

I WONDER, THEN, DO THESE SONGS ABSOLUTELY REPRESENT THE NAKED TRUTH OF YOU PARENTING YOUR SONS..? OR HAVE YOU TAKEN ONE STEP AWAY FROM THE REALITY OF MOTHERHOOD AND, KIND OF, CRAFTED THESE CAREFULLY CONSTRUCTED UNIVERSAL TRUTHS ABOUT HAVING KIDS AND SHONE THEM THROUGH THE PRISM OF YOUR ART? DOES THAT MAKE SENSE?
Yeah, it does… It does make sense. I’ve never thought too much about it in that way, but that’s actually a nice one to think about. As an artist you have the luxury of being able to take a bit of time to try and put into words the things that are, perhaps, quite complicated to say. Obviously you have moments when you’re writing and you try to crystallise a very personal idea within the constraints of a rhyme, or a piece of music, or whatever. You try and find a poetic metaphor for what it is that’s happening to you, or how it is that you’re feeling. You try and maybe define something in an interesting way in the hope that there’s something there, then, for people to identify with when they’re listening to the songs. So they can be personal to me at first but then, yeah, they can become more universal about the experience. But mostly you have to not be an artist and quickly go back to just struggling to be an actual parent, and not yelling at your kids even though you want to. You know… Trying to get them to not shit in their pants.

THE CHALLENGE TO END ALL CHALLENGES!
Ha ha, yeah. It actually is. I think, really, ummmm… my challenge as a parent and as a songwriter is… how to be both. How to be both, and be both properly. And be both well. I think that’s where the challenge is always likely to be, for me. When I write about my kids I feel that I can at least keep them with me. They’re with me, you know what I mean? They can travel with me and I get to be with them, even though they’re not physically here. It’s a selfish act, actually. But I think they like it too. That feeling’s something that I do know well because my father and my mother wrote songs about their kids. My father more than my mom, actually…

… AND YOU LIKED THAT?
Yeah. As a child I always enjoyed hearing my name in my father’s songs. That’s maybe actually because I didn’t grow up with him and I often wondered if he thought about me much. So I was happy when I heard him sing and could hear that he did. I liked it. I liked it a lot.

THE COMPULSION TO WRITE ABOUT THE CHILDREN, TO WRITE ABOUT PARENTHOOD – DID IT NATURALLY OCCUR OR DID YOU HAVE TO PUSH THAT? WAS IT A CASE OF “WELL OKAY, I’VE GOT THIS GOING ON RIGHT NOW – SO I MAY AS WELL USE IT AS MY SOURCE”…
Well obviously the kids take up ninety percent of my brain, and there’s all the emotion, too – but I don’t want to write every single song about them, you know? I don’t think that would be helpful. I want each one, each song about my children, to be special. I don’t think you can just pop ten of those suckers out per year, you know what I mean? You don’t want to make that stuff totally redundant. Nor do you wanna use your kids for songs. That’s not the intention. I do think that the subject of the kids is always gonna come up in my writing but I don’t think that necessarily means that it’ll be songs about them. They’re just gonna probably be a part of a lot of my songs, somehow. They’ll be part of that picture because they’re always part of the picture, you know? I love my kids and they’re the most important thing and I’m devastated when I’m not around them, but as an artist you have to try and come up with other songs on other subject matters which are interesting for people and potentially compelling for people… I’m hoping I have lots of other things to write about. I’m actually also worried about what might come out…

… HA HA… I’M INTRIGUED…
Ha ha. Seriously… I have a tendency to wait until I’m inspired to write a song, for better or for worse. So that means I don’t make records every two years, I make them every four years or so, which is cool. And, actually, on this last one I asked a few other people (like, Beth Orton and Glen Hansard) if they would write songs for me, ‘cos I didn’t have the full twelve song record, you know? 

INCREDIBLY, NOT TOO LONG AFTER YOUR FIRST SON WAS BORN YOUR MOTHER DIED. VERY SOON AFTER, IN FACT… I WAS VERY TOUCHED WHEN I HEARD THAT, AND COULD ONLY IMAGINE HOW IT MUST HAVE BEEN FOR YOU – TO BE PRESENTED WITH THE ENTIRE ‘CIRCLE OF LIFE’ LIKE THAT… IT MUST HAVE BEEN BOTH PAINFUL AND PROFOUND.
Oh, yeah. Yep… Well, there were so many things going on. It’s tough, when you’re dealing with a newborn baby and also dealing with the death of a parent at the same time. My Mom was only sixty-three, so she was kind of young, still. But actually her death wasn’t quite ‘on its own’, in a way, because Arcangelo was born under extrenuous, painful and difficult circumstance. But, in a way, the fact that I was abroad in the UK with that happening meant my energy and focus were on the child. Well, they had to be… I knew that my mother was a few thousand miles away, dying – but I think it was clear that I needed to be right where I was. My child was not well and I wasn’t going to abandon that child’s bedside to go to my mother’s bedside. I was, in a way, relieved of making that choice. I was spared being around the very last stages of my Mom’s decline on a daily basis. I was thankful that I didn’t have to go through the more painful grind of being witness to it every day. So, in many ways I was in a sort of bubble. I flew back to sit with her a couple of times, and I was actually with her the day that she died. But then what happened was that she died, and then we finally got the baby back from the hospital… and then everything hit me.

IT’S TOUGH WHEN IT HITS ANYWAY, BUT DESPITE THE ‘CORRECT DECISION’ IT WOULD BE VERY DIFFICULT FOR YOU NOT TO SUCCUMB TO A FEELING OF GUILT, I IMAGINE…
Oh, yeah. I felt very guilty for having ‘abandoned’ her. It took quite a while to write a song about it because, being who I am, I wasn’t going to pick up a guitar for a while. I was just so shocked, you know?

… AND SO IT WOULD BE VERY HARD TO KNOW WHERE TO START SAYING WHAT NEEDED TO BE SAID…
Yeah. Also, what was the metaphor going to be? How do you start, as an artist, to be able to talk about this? Well, it eventually came with the song ALL YOUR CLOTHES. I talked more about her belongings and then, through that, I was able to talk about her and was able to try and communicate some of the beginnings of the great sadness I felt. My aunt, my father’s sister, had this interesting thought. When we were preparing our different… erm… Not obituaries… What’s the word, the thing when you speak at someone’s funeral..?

… A EULOGY…
Thanks, yeah. We were all taking a crack at preparing our different eulogies. She asked me if I had found my metaphor yet. When things seemed so chaotic that kind of cleared it up in my mind. It answered that question “What is the way into this?” for me. What is the story I can tell, to begin to tell the bigger story, you know?

I’VE HEARD YOU DESCRIBE GOODNIGHT CITY AS A “FORWARD-FACING RECORD AS OPPOSED TO A NAVAL-GAZING RECORD” – WHICH, I THINK, IS A RATHER LOVELY WAY OF SAYING THAT IT’S YOUR FIRST “GROWN-UP RECORD”… I HOPE THAT’S NOT TOO INSULTING A WAY OF PUTTING IT TO YOU?
Ha ha ha ha… No, it’s not insulting at all. Ha ha. I think that that is exactly what it is…

… AND THERE’S A BEAUTIFUL SONG CALLED BEFORE THE CHILDREN CAME ALONG. IT HAS A SENTIMENT MANY COULD RELATE TO, I THINK. IT’S A FOND AND NOSTALGIC LOOK AT A TIME BEFORE THE RESPONSIBILITY, THE PROFOUND SHIFT, OF PARENTHOOD HAPPENED. BUT I SENSE THAT DESPITE THE NOSTALGIA, ONE LOOKS BACK AND EVERYTHING THAT COMES BEFORE PARENTHOOD IN SOME WAY NOW SEEMS NAIVE… PERHAPS EMBARRASSING… SELFISH, MAYBE… AND ULTIMATELY IT SEEMS TRIVIAL, UNIMPORTANT…
Yes, yes. That’s how it feels in your body. You know, as I travel with this record I’ve started coming across a lot of my earlier songs – particularly those from my first record, which I think is the record most people probably identify with. It has songs on it like BLOODY MOTHER FUCKING ASSHOLE, so there’s definitely an anger and an aggression and a sadness which is youthful. It has a youthfulness. It clicked for a certain amount of people. I’m thankful ‘cos I had an explosive youth and I’ve had kind of a free life, and I would never dismiss that earlier part of my own life – ‘cos it was important. So when I’m singing those songs I really don’t wanna consider them as trivial or frivolous, or to be dismissed, or whatever… Parenthood is a farewell to the past, certainly. A farewell to youth, definitely. It’s a life-changer and you can’t shake it, you know? In fact I don’t wanna shake it. But the fact is, you have to get there. So you have to have that bit before. I think it all set me up to enjoy being a parent even more! And also, actually, to be completely fair some people just don’t have children – but that in no way means they’re not doing something meaningful, useful or valuable in life, does it?

YOU MENTIONED BLOODY MOTHER FUCKING ASSHOLE AND I BLUSHED. I’M THINKING OF THAT SONG, AND ALSO THAT VERY STRIKING EARLIER ALBUM TITLE, WHICH SEEMED TO SUGGEST A WHOLE STORY OF ITS OWN – I KNOW YOU’RE MARRIED BUT I’VE GOT FEELINGS TOO… I CAME UP WITH THIS PHRASE TO DESCRIBE YOU AND YOUR WORK – “SEVERELY HONEST”…
Nice! Ha ha…

… SO I WANT TO ASK YOU WHETHER, AS A WRITER, THERE IS A LINE YOU WON’T CROSS. A LINE OF SELF-CENSORSHIP. OR IS EVERYTHING FAIR GAME FOR YOUR ART?
I think I’ve crossed the line… But I think there might be another line that I won’t cross. That would probably be not useful. I do think that sometimes you have to cross the line if it’s important to the song, in terms of expressing something painful or something that really needs to be said. I often find a way around that is to use some humour, you know? I like things that are a bit cringey – and I usually insult myself more than I insult anybody else, anyway, in my songs… But if you’re just being deliberately cruel and going over that line only for the sake of hurting someone else, or for the sake of being perverse or subversive, then it’s totally not worth it. So does that make any sense to you?

IT DOES – BECAUSE THE OTHER SIDE OF THAT LINE CAN BE BOTH DANGEROUS AND DAMAGING… AS AN ARTIST YOU SHOULD ABSOLUTELY RESERVE THE RIGHT TO MAKE YOUR LIFE AS DANGEROUS AS YOU WANT – AND DANGER IS OFTEN QUITE THRILLING, OF COURSE… BUT THE DAMAGE IS SOMETHING ELSE. IF IT’S DAMAGE TO YOURSELF THEN… FINE. YOU’VE GOT INTERESTING MATERIAL BUT YOU MAY HAVE ISSUES… IF IT’S INTENTIONAL DAMAGE TO OTHER PEOPLE THEN IT’S ART, BUT YOU STILL ALSO HAVE ISSUES AND IT’S ACTUALLY OUT OF ORDER…
… Uh-huh. Yeah. I’ve done that in the past. I’ve definitely written songs which are aimed at other people like that. And in those cases I must have felt it was more important that the song actually got written than considering any damage, which is… ummmm… Well, anyway, ultimately that sort of thing is not serving any good purpose. It’s just really not worth it. You’ve got to always step back and go “Is this really worth saying?” – and that goes for real life, too. Not just songs. If you’re only spending your time talking shit about other people then it’s really not time well spent.

Order GOODNIGHT CITY here

Tues 11 July   LONDON   ULU Student Central   Tickets
Weds 12 July   WREXHAM   William Aston Hall   Tickets
Thurs 13 July   SHEFFIELD University Foundry   Tickets