Rufus Wainwright
with Kate and Anna McGarrigle
and Martha Wainwright

Dunstan Playhouse
4 February

Murray Bramwell

We probably have Leonard Cohen to thank for the chance to see, at the one time, so many members of the Wainwright – McGarrigle clan. In Sydney recently for a tribute concert to the legendary Canadian poet and singer, Kate and Anna McGarrigle have included an Adelaide date for the first time in some years. Their son and nephew, Rufus Wainwright is listed as top of the bill – for many of us in the audience, though, he may be the icing but he’s sure not the cake.

Emerging in the mid-Seventies, when their songs were memorably covered by Maria Muldaur, the McGarrigle Sisters produced a number of classic albums that stand among the very best of Canadian folk and country music. And through her marriage to Loudon Wainwright III, Kate McGarrigle has also raised a musical family with son and daughter, Rufus and Martha Wainwright, becoming well-known with their own projects. Rufus especially has produced four albums for Dreamworks and registered a flamboyant and highly original presence.

It was in 1998 that the various members of the family got together to record the delightful McGarrigle Family Hour, where Loudon, Kate and Anna, kids and friends put together a varied mix of old-timey music, original compositions, show tunes, hymns and greatest hits. It was just like the Carter Family, except that the eccentric and dysfunctional Wainwright -McGarrigles represent the realities of the late 20th century family – divorce, regret, recrimination – all candidly described in songs that are distinctive to them and familiar to us. Kate wrote about her babies in her songs and Loudon famously celebrated his infant son at his mother’s breast with the song Rufus is a Tit Man.

“Welcome to our parlour,” Anna McGarrigle says, early into the ambling proceedings at the Dunstan Playhouse. And that is how it feels with the dotty informality of the playful sisters, dressed down in jeans and homespun, their grey hair defiantly askew, sitting at the side of the stage with guitars and accordions, bemused at Rufus’s earnest efforts to establish his authority. It is still about boundaries here – mother and son, sister and brother, sister and sister, mother and daughter. There is undoubtedly love, but also an edge of rivalry and insecurity, and hints – or more than that – of discrepancy. The family that plays together may stay together, but it has its frictions.

The set opens, brilliantly and pre-emptively, with Heart Like a Wheel. Instead of having to wait for the hits, we have the jewel first-off. Anna and Kate’s vocals mingle with alchemic harmony while Rufus, with his distinctively operatic tenor sings the lead flawlessly. He sounds like Loudon but stronger, more confident (often over-confident ) and has a fluency that can be breath-taking. Then Kate and Anna – with piano and accordion – sing Matapedia, the title song from their excellent mid-Nineties CD. Their musicianship is a delight, assured and beautifully judged.

Rufus, in contrast, likes to be more histrionic. Singing Vibrate (from Want One) with ornate piano accompaniment, his voice is too strong for the mix, as it often is when he is at the keyboard, and, in white suit and foppish scarf, he seems agitated and self-conscious. Martha follows with an unannounced song of her own. She also has a formidable voice but the composition is undistinguished unlike the later, torchy You’ve Got Away With Me. The sisters return for Anna’s theme song from Bridget Jones and a delicious ballad in French, and then the whole group, including Don Falzone on upright bass, produce a marvellous reading of Who By Fire, a Leonard Cohen call-and-response classic.

After going excessively Over the Rainbow, Rufus sings the title song from Poses, the fearlessly explicit Gay Messiah, and also from his recent CD, The Art Teacher. These songs have an awkward structure often and the lyrics are frequently lost. It is the traditional material that seems better to bring his indulgences to heel – for instance the sublime version, by the whole group, of Green Green Rocky Road – and St James Infirmary Blues (mutating in and out of The Streets of Laredo) His Cigarettes and Chocolate is a fine song, though, and Martha also produces a show-stopper with a poignant song to her father, very un-poignantly entitled You Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole.

It is hard for the young fry in a show like this – and, although we will no doubt hear much more from them, it is not really their night. Kate and Anna’s version of (Talk to Me of) Mendocino is so beautifully and thriftily crafted it is a revelation and the final encore, the traditional song Hard Times Come Again No More, sung in splendid four-part harmony, reminds us that simple gifts are best – and carry most feeling.

The Adelaide Review, No 262, February 18, 2005, p.26.