Martha Wainwright

Arcangelo arrived in London two months early but the joy was put on hold when Wainwright’s mother, Kate McGarrigle, succumbed to cancer on January 18, 2010, his original due date.

With touring commitments, Wainwright sang tracks from Sans Fusils, Ni Souliers, A Paris in Brighton six months later. She returns two and a half years on with the first original material to deal with those emotional times. Come Home To Mama’s lead-off single, Proserpina, is the last song ever written by her mother.

Kate McGarrigle, one half of The McGarrigle Sisters, performed it only once – at her last concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall in December 2009.

For Wainwright’s recording on her fourth solo record, she digs deep to find perhaps her most intimate and emotive vocal performance.

She says she recorded in Sean Lennon’s studio and the sound is her trying to channel the spirit of her late mother.

“I sing the song very much like she sang it, in the melody, you know, so I’m really trying to stir her up from wherever she is. I’m trying to evoke her, to have a few moments of closeness to her again.”

Wainwright has always been autobiographical and expressed herself with her music. She has now taken it to a new level.

“We added the primal scream after as a way to indicate some of my own sadness,” she explains.

Few singers can say that after 36 years their voice is more concise and fully realised.

But Wainwright’s power and range is as fierce as ever. She notices imperfections, and thanks her brother Rufus for her voice rather than training.

“I was his back-up singer for his first couple of records and he told me what to do. He had some acrobatic vocal concepts and I was always trying to keep up and hold the note as long as him.

“He is incredibly powerful – and to try to keep up with that voice created the way I sing.”

McGarrigle’s Proserpina takes its name from and is inspired by the ancient Roman goddess who dies and is reborn.

Wainwright loves to sing its beautiful melody. She calls it a perfect song which is well suited to the record because its conciseness is ballast for the rest of the songs.

“It’s clearly written from the point of view of someone who is halfway to the place they are heading towards, that we are all heading towards.

“It has a grandiosity and a reverence that makes it almost a religious experience to sing, to try to connect to mythology in general, to the people in the song and the concept of life and death.”

Writing inspiration

After recording a song written for her and her brother by her mother, she has done the same for Arcangelo. To welcome her son to the world she wrote Everything Wrong.

“It was the last song I wrote for the record. I wrote it pretty quickly in a desperate moment. It just came out of me. I liked having songs written about me and for me when I was a kid, so it’s something special and also very revealing and very candid and open.

“It’s an apology for any mistakes I might make in the future. It’s a fear and insecurity but a deep want to succeed as a mother in love.”

Wainwright’s mother and father split up when she was just three years old. McGarrigle and Martha’s father, Loudon Wainwright III, narrated the collapse of their relationship through song.

Loudon also wrote songs to his children, but Martha’s experience was less pleasing than her son’s.

Loudon wrote a song called I’d Rather Be Lonely when Martha was 14 and later explained at a show it was written about her.

She got her own back with Bloody Mother F***ing Asshole in 2004.

What she sings to her husband, Brad Albetta, who is bass player in her band and her previous records’ producer, is a secret.

Though it was Brad’s idea to invite Yuka C Honda from Cibo Matto to produce Come Home To Mama. Honda brought along her husband, Wilco guitarist Nels Cline, to help.

“I wanted to work with a woman and another artist and there are very few female producers,” explains Wainwright.

“The idea came from Brad because neither of us wanted to make a record together after we had been through so much – having kids, buying a house, losing my own mother. I went to Brad describing the things I wanted and we’ve been fans of Yuka’s for a long time.”

The couple have moved back to Montreal. One reason is that Wainwright wants her son to go to school there and have French as his first language. Another is to return to the house where her and Rufus were raised.

“I inherited it when she [McGarrigle] died. I lived there when I was teenager and it’s a nice space in a beautiful city.

“It’s nice to go home because it’s an easy place to write. I’ve written songs over the years there – all my first songs were written there. As someone who has more responsibility and less time, writing has become something you become more disciplined with.”

• St George’s Church, St George’s Road, Brighton, Friday, December 7. Doors 7pm, SOLD OUT. For returns, call 01273 606312