In a mesmeric concert on Tuesday, Martha Wainwright, alone except for a couple of guitars, pulled off a triumph by creating a sense of intimacy in the cavernous hall.

Martha Wainwright
Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow
****

In a mesmeric concert on Tuesday, Martha Wainwright, alone except for a couple of guitars, pulled off a triumph by creating a sense of intimacy in the cavernous hall. There were moments when we could well have been standing in a Greenwich Village cafe.

She displayed that rare talent of engaging the audience with the sheer force of her personality as much as her astonishing voice. That she had arrived in the city only a few hours earlier gave the show an edge and a sense that it was being performed casually and on the hoof.

Her back catalogue mines a rich seam of songs about being a woman wronged. While she bares her thoughts and feelings before us in an amazingly honest way, she is never tempted to turn a crisis into a drama. Instead, she uses her stunning vocal acrobatics to convey a sense of heartbreaking emotion. From the opener, This Life, through Bleeding All Over You, to the closer GPT, she sang with a passion of the stupidity of men and the helplessness of the women who love them.

She was joined for one song, the Beatles' We Can Work It Out, by Teddy Thompson who, earlier, had performed with his band, a full set of his radio-friendly ballads. For what proved to be a masterful duet, both sang off the melody to quite stunning effect. While her talent is easy to trace back through her family line, she has proved that hers is, by far, the most singular.
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