Martha Wainwright

Paradiso
Amsterdam
The Netherlands

9th December 2012 (2012-12-09)


RECORDING:

Type: Audience master, recorded from centre seat in last row, approximately
15 metres from the PA.

Source: Factory-matched pair of Schoeps CCM 41V microphones (DINa mounted) ->
Marantz PMD661 recorder with Oade Concert Mod
(-18 dB gain/44.1 kHz/24 bit WAV)

Lineage: Audacity 2.0.2
* applied 1 dB boost to right channel
* applied variable amplification for consistency across recording
* major attenuation of sound of audience
* added fades
* split tracks
* converted to 16 bit
-> FLAC (compression level 8) [libFLAC 1.2.1 20070917]

Taper: Ian Macdonald (ianmacd)


SET LIST:

01. [04:11] Factory
02. [01:09] [banter]
03. [03:39] I Am A Diamond
04. [03:14] Far Away
05. [00:41] [banter]
06. [02:49] I Am Sorry
07. [00:29] [banter]
08. [03:21] Some People
09. [01:29] [banter]
10. [04:26] Four Black Sheep
11. [03:24] Can You Believe It?
12. [04:21] Radio Star
13. [00:54] [banter]
14. [04:25] Leave Behind
15. [03:59] Jesus And Mary
16. [03:47] Bleeding All Over You
17. [01:20] [banter]
18. [04:12] L'Accordéoniste
19. [04:33] Soudain Une Vallée
20. [03:12] Ball & Chain
21. [04:32] All Your Clothes
22. [00:51] [banter]
23. [04:13] Everything Wrong
24. [03:50] I Wanna Make An Arrest
25. [01:03] [band introduction]
26. [03:57] Proserpina
27. [01:01] [encore break]
28. [04:47] Stormy Weather
29. [00:53] [encore break]
30. [05:27] This Life

Total running time: 90:09

NOTES:

The evening starts with a couple of surprises.

Firstly, there's an unadvertised support band. From the CDs on sale at the
merchandise stand, I deduce that it's AroarA, comprising two members of Martha
Wainwright's band, the husband and wife team of Andrew Whiteman and Ariel
Engle. They are already on stage as I enter the main hall.

As I do so, I encounter the second and more significant surprise of the
evening: the Paradiso has been converted into a seated venue for the occasion.
It's unassigned seating, of course, and I've turned up at my leisure,
expecting to catch a draught from the PA, as per my usual modus operandi. Why
don't they put this information on the web site? I checked it about an hour
before I left,

I scour the rows of bum-filled seats and spot -- yes! -- a solitary vacant
seat remaining in the back row, almost dead centre. Even if I had had my pick
of the seats, what I would have chosen couldn't be more than one or two places
removed from this one. It's as good as ideal. I enquire whether it's truly
still available and it is, so I quickly take my place and thank my good
fortune at securing a spot that forms a perfect equilateral triangle with the
left and right PA stacks. The sound should be great from here.

You see? There IS an advantage to being a sad old twat who goes to gigs alone.
I had similar luck last month at The xx in Utrecht. Blessed are the people of
the West, with their unerring reluctance to sit next to strangers!

I relax and enjoy what's left of the support and then contemplate the mixed
blessing of being parked on my derrière for the duration of the evening. On
the one hand, I'm tired, so this will provide some pleasant relief after a
long day that had a very early start. On the other, I'm not just tired -- I'm
knackered -- so I will have to make a conscious effort not to doze off during
the show.

Martha's up at 21:30. She kicks off with a couple of solo numbers, including
her mother, the late Kate McGarrigle's 'I Am A Diamond'. Halfway through the
next song, 'Far Away', the back curtain ripples and is pushed aside by the
members of her band as they join her on stage.

Wainwright is in great form tonight. Her powerful and emotive voice brings
every song to life in vivid colour, perhaps nowhere more strikingly than when
she covers Édith Piaf's 'L'Accordéoniste', undeniably one of the highlights of
the evening's twenty song set. I hadn't expected her to revisit the Piaf
repertoire on this tour (and it is also absent from the set-list), so it's a
nice surprise.

The ease with which Wainwright lays claim to her audience betrays her musical
family background. She's a natural, effortlessly engaging in profuse badinage
throughout the evening. By the time she's given the background to most of the
songs in the set, it's as if we're watching a family friend perform, not a
woman we've never met.

Most of the audience are the senior of Wainwright's 36 years, your taper
included. This, and the seating arrangements, ensure that the Paradiso bears
witness to a tamer, more civilised affair this evening, but don't mistake the
unforced atmosphere for a lack of enthusiasm.

Rapturous applause greets every song and I'm lucky enough this evening to find
myself sitting directly behind a middle-aged man who feels the need to stick
his fingers in his mouth and whistle after every song, thereby ensuring me
lots of fun in post-production to render his contributions less obtrusive.

I'm jesting, of course. The bloke is simply having a good time and expressing
his delight. Give me a thousand of him over the usual blight of mobile phone
movie directors and self-important wankers with verbal diarrhoea.

The end of the main set is met with a predictable, but entirely merited
standing ovation (which is always much easier to detect at a seated concert).

Two encores follow, the first the hardy perennial 'Stormy Weather', which has
been recorded by just about everyone from Frank Sinatra to Michael Crawford,
and the closing song of the evening, a rendition of 'This Life' that
Wainwright positively belts out, putting her all into the vocal.

"This life is boring. This life right now is snoring", she sings. She can't be
talking about anyone in the Paradiso, though; that's for sure. Bored is
something we might have been half an hour before arriving and it's something
we might be once again half an hour from now, but right here, right now, we're
left savouring the moment.

I can't claim to be a huge fan of Martha Wainwright. I even wondered as the
gig came around why exactly I had purchased a ticket, but having now witnessed
her performance, I am in no doubt why I felt I should attend, nor why I shall
be purchasing a ticket to come again upon Martha's return, whenever that may
be.

The sound in the Paradiso this evening was superb. Add to that an ideal
recording location, the lack of bodies passing in front of me or causing me to
turn, plus the increasing modern rarity of a reverent audience, and you have a
set of circumstances highly conducive to recording the evening for posterity.

Accordingly, the recording that has arisen from those auspicious circumstances
does not disappoint.

I had to boost the right channel by 1 dB to compensate for an apparent
imbalance between the two channels when Martha performed solo. I sat in the
middle of my row, so it would appear that Martha really was louder from the
left-hand PA than from the right. That is more or less corrected here.

I also raised the quieter songs in the set, making for a more consistent
listening experience across the whole performance. No compression has been
used, however, as this would compromise the dynamics of the individual songs.

Finally, significant attenuation of the audience was performed, sending the
applause, cheering and whistling into the background, where it belongs.

There aren't a lot of audience recordings of Martha Wainwright in the wild, so
I offer this in the hope it will become a welcome addition to your collection.

As always, samples are provided to help you decide whether this is worth the
share ratio depletion for you.