 | | Reviews | | |  LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III
So Damn Happy
Sanctuary SANCD197
Recorded live at Los Angeles' Largo Club and the Mystic Theater in Petaluma, California in January 2002, this is Wainwright's debut outing on Sanctuary Records and his first release since 2001's Last Man On Earth.
The audience is with him through every note of the 17 songs here (12 taken mainly from his post-1990 output plus five new) and why wouldn't they be? 35 years of singer-songwriting has only sharpened the wit and perspicacity of this man who picks over his life's minutia, wraps it in language veering from laddish doggerel to poetic splendour and exposes the resulting eccentricities to the world with candid humour.
Wainwright goofs on stage, makes with the mad intros, sends up his own songs; sings straight ballads with a twist in the tail (Much Better Bets) and verses harbouring spiky insights and dark motifs behind every hilarious quip (The Sh*t Song, Tonya's Twirls). Some are plain wacky (Heaven), some get a grip of the tear ducts and hang on tight (A Year). From the internet piracy protest song Something For Nothing ("In love, war and cyberspace everything's fair, And it's OK to steal 'cos it's so nice to share") to the zen-like Dreaming, it's a switchback ride between belly laughs and heartache, sometimes in the same song.
Daughter Martha Wainwright's sexy vocal, Richard Thompson's spine-chillingly jangly guitar, David Mansfield's expressive fiddle/guitar/mandolin and Van Dyke Parks' mischievous ivory-tinkling are prominent in a sympathetic band perfectly at home with Wainwright's eclectic stylings, whether folk-inflected, country-tinged or jazzy. I'd forgotten just how good he is. Great gigs, great album.
Mel McClellan - August 2003
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Folk & Acoustic
