The beguiling performer and songwriter MARTHA WAINWRIGHT returns with her latest album, Love Will Be Reborn, and not since 2012’s Come Home to Mama has her record been so full of original written material.

Martha’s fifth studio album follows recent years of loneliness and clarity in search of optimism and joy.

Of course, as in the best of traditions, with a new album comes some live dates, and with a pandemic seemingly kicked into touch, Martha is back out on the road and playing a handful of dates to showcase this fantastic collection of songs.

The tour takes Martha from Frome in Somerset to Quebec in Canada, and we’re pleased to say one of the stop off points is right here in South Wales at the Tramshed in Cardiff this Sunday.

We’re sure you know that Martha is the daughter of American folk singer and actor Loudon Wainwright III and Canadian folk singer-songwriter Kate McGarrigle. She was raised in a musical family along with her older brother, Rufus Wainwright, in Montreal, Canada.

In fact the entire family are one big musical dynasty.

The Wainwright Sisters are a singer-songwriter duo featuring Martha and her American half-sister Lucy Wainwright Roche. In November 2015 they released the album Songs in the Dark, which we have no trouble recommending you put on your favourite listening device.

Martha wrote the first song, and what would become the title track of the record a few years ago. It was a very dark time, she says, but the positivity and luminosity of “Love Will Be Reborn” signalled what was to come. The song simply poured out of her.Â

Much of Martha’s songwriting since 2016’s Goodnight City felt too raw.

“There were several years where I picked up the guitar, and I was so, so sad and depressing. I would just put it down because I was terrible.”

Before writing it out, or writing through it for catharsis, Martha had to live it. Album opener “Middle of the Lake” reinforces Martha’s path forward as she sings over voltaic chords and percussion,

“I sing my songs of love and pain / Winds of change or simply singing, I’m singing in the rain.”

Her work never shies away from an existential throbbing wound.

“There are a couple major subjects on the record. From what I can tell, there’s really dark and then light. It really is reflective of a very difficult period of divorce. Then, after that, it’s meeting somebody new and amazing. And so you hear certain songs about this new love.”

Martha enlisted Canadian producer Pierre Marchand for Love Will Be Reborn. “Hole In My Heart” is an upbeat song, with Martha singing, “I got naked right away when I saw you / My love was like the rain when I saw you,” as is the track, “Getting Older,” which is about ageing and new love.

Other songs, she says……

“Represent me trying to shake away the past a little bit, the ball and chain of that anger, try to escape from it.” 

There is no song more gripping than “Report Card.” The song is stripped to essential instrumentals punctuating her anguish. Martha expresses on the sombre track a feeling of deep loneliness, evoking emotional nuances particular to parents and individuals separated from their children because of custody arrangements.Â

Martha Wainwright’s role as an artist has always been to embrace her wildness and sketch out her raw depth. This edge is what makes here uncompromisingly herself and continues to draw in an audience two decades on.

To begin again does not mean starting over. This process of rebirth honours the past to move forward. Love Will Be Reborn captures Martha’s heart in transition. In an effort to rise out of some painful depths, as she says much like a phoenix from the ashes of an existential twilight, Wainwright bore witness to what her heart endured to find a new joy once more.

There is something quirky and relaxing about seeing Martha live. She’s been known to say…..

“This is really disorganised. I hope you like things loose”

Her shows are relaxed and charming, and filled with songs that will live with you for a while afterwards. Unless of course she admits she’s tired of her own songs, and plays a few of her mother’s and some old Classics.

We reckon it’s a Wainwright thing. Rufus did something similar last time I saw him live. And we love her (and him) for it it, spontaneity at a gig is always welcome.

She will banter with the audience and may even ask for some crowd requests, the Tramshed is the ideal venue for that sort of interaction. If she does, please ask for Bloody Mother F****** A****** for no other reason than she’s likely to perform it, and it’s a great song.Â

BMFA was actually used at the end of the second episode in season three of Orange is the New Black, and at the end of the fourth episode in season one Big Little Lies.

MARTHA WAINWRIGHT gets to the Tramshed in Cardiff this Sunday, 26th at 7:30pm. Tickets are £36.40 and you can get yours here – MARTHA. Incidentally the show is for 14 years and over.