Much like a literary dame eloquently cheering on a football team from the terraces, some juxtapositions are just so hard to envisage in your mind’s eye. This thought popped into my head tonight when Martha Wainwright announced that earlier in the day, she had popped into the local watering hole the Flying Pig and “ordered an ale”. It’s hard to imagine her walking into a spit and sawdust public house and knocking back a pint of Brewers Gold. This is recalled with all good intention, for the Flying Pig is soon to be demolished to make way for more offices. That this should be happening at all is a travesty, the Pig has for many years been one of Cambridge’s finest live music attractions, not to mention an essential stop-off point when attending a gig at the Junction; that it should be making way for office space at a time when increasing numbers are embracing home working seems especially harsh. So, Martha is telling her crowd tonight to enjoy it while it’s still there and raise a glass to a dying breed. The Flying Pig doesn’t attract the sports crowds; it never became a restaurant; it always stuck to its two primary passions of serving beers from local breweries and supporting live music. I am going to miss it.
So it is that as one of life’s treasures departs, another delight returns, for tonight is my first time stepping out to hear live music since I wrote about Amy LaVere in March 2020. I have been really feeling the absence of live entertainment lately, for all lockdown really proved is that nothing can effectively replace the direct thrill of being in the same room as performing musicians. I enjoyed a couple of live streams during that period, but there is simply nothing to compare to the real thing. I even got myself out of the Pig early to make sure I caught the support act tonight, which turned out to be a wise move because Martha’s fellow Canadians Bernice were a revelation. It later transpired that they double up as the headliners backing band, but the sounds they have created under their own identity is well worth checking out.
I probably should be clear; it is a stretch to call Bernice folk; they are far from that. Even the drummer is playing an electronic effects-based kit, and their whole pallet is lo-fi, floating electronica. It is subtle, gentle even, and the lack of bombast means the audience leans in to pay attention. The reason they do this, though, rather than sit and chat as regular support act crowds tend to, is because singer Robin Dann is a sculptor of mesmeric melodic excursions sung with a voice stuffed full of clotted cream, sensual goodness. I took a fresh discovery away with me tonight that, post-gig, has continued to entertain.
Following a little shift around of the instruments comes Martha, a beguiling combination of bohemian theatricality and feet-on-the-ground folkiness. The singer-songwriter in her that is set to dominate tonight; however, for a huge proportion of the show, the song selection leans to superb new album ‘Love Will Be Reborn’. By her own admission, this is a record of extreme shades, the sound of an artist wrestling through dark times and agitating for new light and hope to break out. It is, essentially, Martha’s divorce album, and she is a painfully open book in her raking over real-life trauma. Of course, followers of her career will be aware that this is nothing new; it’s not a coincidence that as the evening’s end approaches, people call out for her to play ‘Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole’. That particularly unvarnished address directed at her father, Loudon Wainwright, connects with so many who have had to fight to prove themselves, and Martha can hardly decline the request; it is almost her signature tune. Nevertheless, this new batch of confessionals may well rise to become the backbone of Martha’s catalogue, especially the title track, the aching ‘Report Card’ and the resonant ‘Body And Soul’.
Despite the raw subject matter, this evening is far from a maudlin affair. Martha is far too much of a show woman to allow that to happen. She occasionally puts down her guitar to work the microphone, such as when reciting a sumptuous version of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Chelsea Hotel #2’ and transforming it into a glitzy show tune. Then as the calls for an encore dissipate, members of Bernice form a semi-circle and sing backing to a heartbreaking version of ‘Proserpina’, the song that Martha’s mother Kate McGarrigle wrote and her daughter tells us it was “the last one she wrote before her passing”. While singing, Martha closes her eyes and reaches out her hands; in those moments, you are watching an artist perform with conviction as she touches the heart of the song. It is the real deal alright, exactly what you come out for on these evenings in the hope of experiencing. That magic spark that can make you laugh, dance and cry or, as on this occasion, the hairs on your arms stand up. I believe there is no other entertainment that gives you this as frequently as live music; what a relief it is to have it back.