Album Review: Loudon Wainwright III, ‘Loudon Live in London’
Loudon Wainwright III is the poet laureate of the human condition. With wry humor and a sly grin on his face, he peels back the thin sheaths we use to paper over our ineptness, our fumbled relationships, our faltering attempts at love, our missed opportunities, our fractious family lives, and, every now and then, our joys.
Wainwright is also a consummate entertainer whose humorous antics, slapstick grimaces, and droll banter light up his stage shows. If you’re ever in the audience at one of Wainwright’s shows, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll sing along. Wainwright’s new album, Loudon Live in London, which was recorded in 2024 during a three-night residency at Nell’s Jazz and Blues Club, puts us in front row seats so we can experience the very best of Loudon live.
The 21 songs on this album range over Wainwright’s catalog, from earlier titles such as “Motel Blues” to more recent songs, such as “Lifetime Achievement.” He also includes his moving versions of songs by other artists—Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright,” for example—in his sets.
On the minor chord blues “All in a Family,” Wainwright meditates on the messiness of families—“what family’s not insane”—where the “smallest thing” often becomes the “biggest deal.” By the end of the song, though, the new baby in the family might just be the addition to the family tree that, at least for a moment, draws the family closer. Wainwright’s vocal modulations mimic the various phases of sex—the young’s hunger for it more than food, the waning of desire as couples age—in the hilariously tongue-in-cheek “I Remember Sex.”
Wainwright’s son, Rufus, duets with him on the folky meditation on the waning moments of life and leaving this life, and the memories of what we leave behind, on “Out of This World.” On the uproarious spoken word piece “Memorial Service” Wainwright imagines his own service offering “helpful guidelines” on whom to invite and whom he hopes will show up to the service. The lilting “I Knew Your Mother” reminds a child that there was a time before them when “love was the means and you were the end.” In 2023, Wainwright was inducted into the North Carolina Music Hall of Fame—“I want to tell you it’s about time,” Wainwright joked with his audience during his introduction to the song—and he chronicles his birth and life in the affectionate “Tar Hell.” In this ode to North Carolina, he reminds us that “Down in Carolina/People played and made music down there for money, for fun, and for love,” and then he lists a long line of the Tar Heel State’s musicians: Charlie Poole, Doc Watson, Nina Simone, Parliament Funk, among others.
Every track on Loudon Live in London sparkles with Wainwright’s incisive wit and lyrical ingenuity. The album captures Loudon Wainwright at his very best.
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More information about Loudon Live in London is available HERE
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