Canadian chanteuse Martha Wainwright would like to offer a helpful preface to anyone partaking of her sonically adventurous new fifth album Love Will Be Reborn. “I am really, fundamentally at heart, a beatnik,” she says, so there’s a beret-cool, Howl-confessional catharsis shading this stark set, wherein she bravely exorcises some dark personal demons with a track listing that goes from slow and grim (the folk opener “Middle of the Lake,” a plaintive howler called “Getting Older,” and the ghostly a cappella “Report Card”) to fast and lyrically light (the spoken-word-retro “Hole in My Heart,” a church-carillon-chiming “Justice” and the breezy uptempo pop of “Sometimes”). The set closes on a French-sung, lullaby-innocent “Falaise de Malaise,” which makes you stop and wonder—was the pain you sensed pulsing in Wainwright’s voice at its inception just an Eyes Wide Shut dream? No, it was all too real, she admits, and she’s happy that listeners can’t leave until “the mood is galloping and cheery,” she says.
