Martha Wainwright is ready to uphold the responsibility that comes with her surname, she tells Tony Clayton-Lea
It's been a good year if your surname is Wainwright; it seems all the members of that well-known singing family (think the von Trapps with severe dysfunction issues) have been in our faces: father Loudon, son Rufus, Rufus's mother and aunt, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, and last but not least, daughter Martha.
Earlier this year, Martha released her self- titled debut album; it's an excoriating piece of work that is nowhere near as cynical or jaded as that of her father's, as sweet as her mother's, or as grandiose as her brother's. In short, little miss Martha is as idiosyncratic as all the other members of her family, but just a tad more acerbic. Is there a downside to being a Wainwright, though? And is it fair that a debut album should be weighed down by so much family baggage?
"One of the reasons why it took me so long to make the record was that I was living vicariously through the people around me," says Martha. "The necessity to have a record on a label wasn't as great, because people in my family were doing it. I could watch them work hard and sell records, and I could sit back and enjoy an easier life. The baggage is inevitable; I honour my family for what they are. I'm not going to pretend that they don't exist."
Has she not ever wished for a different surname? It must be occasionally annoying to be lumped in with a family that makes a living by expressing its domestic problems in song? "Martha Washington is what I've always wanted to call myself. You know, maybe I wish some other people in my family had a different surname! I always thought Rufus would be a great single name for a music artist. No, I'm very proud of my surname; I think it's a nice, strong name and I'm totally prepared to uphold the responsibility that comes along with it. The level of excellence, and so on."
A wry smile crosses her lips, and for a moment Martha is no longer the fractious offspring of two creative temperaments but rather a smart singer-songwriter with an artistic background.
She says she wanted to be a theatre actor because of her tendency to dramatise. "It's possible that watching too many movies and plays has formed me to a degree. I hope that doesn't come across as me being an insincere person, because I also feel very close to my feelings and my inner core, or whatever you want to call it. But I also think that comes from my theatre training, which I did as a young adult. But actors: I could never hang out with them - their slates were too clean.
"As a musician first and a writer second, you have to have a strong persona and I think an actor has the opposite in the sense that they have to be mouldable, a blank slate in order to play different characters. I was never able to do that." Musically, she intimates, she always looked for something with a bit more edge: "But only because my mother and my aunt had cornered the market on beautiful female harmonies, softness and 'maternalness'."
The opposite of such feminine cosiness was the rock chick. "People such as Patti Smith or Chrissie Hynde," offers Martha, "the side of femininity that is assertive yet still quite sexy, a little dirtier, grittier. People seem to think I'm close to my masculine side. Maybe that's true, I don't know." She notices a querulous look on my face. "It's an American thing, don't worry about it."
As on record, so it is in person: the songs are strong, full of character. Are they very much representative of her as a person, or are they bits and pieces of her mixed with other people? "They're very representative of me as a person, and are, I would say, the story of a girl through her 20s.
"My next record, or the one after that, might be about gurgling babies and mortgage payments, I'm not sure, but this one is a direct representation of my life over the last eight years or so. You know, problems with men and other things, and myself more than anybody else. All of the lyrics are true; none of it was made up for the sake of turning a phrase. The images and stories told are direct reflections of things that have happened to me. I'm not a prolific writer, either; I have to wait for a slew of dramatic things to occur to me, until I'm ready to burst and write something."
She's not like her brother Rufus, then, who to date has written several albums of material to his sister's one. We know what she thinks of her father - just listen to her song Bloody Mother F**king Asshole for verification - so we're not going to ask.
What does she think of her brother? "I'm not so sure that's a fair question. I would rate him as a great songwriter in the overall structure of the songs and the music. On the lyrical sense, one of his songs I'd always wished I'd written is Dinner at Eight. It's an incredibly revealing song. Others have brilliant little moments, and the way he uses orchestration is amazing. His voice, also, is a deep well of sound. He's someone who, when you watch him play and sing, is in another world completely. He's certainly not putting it on."
How does she rate herself? She's pretty good, she says, but not one of the greats. "Some of the greats are probably connected to something more than most humans, or have a greater brain capability. I don't think I'm one of those people. I'm just a very normal person who has a lot of feelings."
Martha Wainwright plays Dublin's Temple Bar Music Centre on Mon, Dec 12. Martha and Rufus Wainwright play St James's Church, Dingle, on Tue, Dec 13, as part of recordings for RTÉ's Two Sounds: Other Voices series (tickets: www.othervoices@eircom.net). Martha Wainwright is on release from MapleMusic