Bloody Mother F*****g A*****e

As the daughter of folk music giants Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright III and sister to chamber pop auteur Rufus Wainwright, drama student turned singer/songwriter Martha Wainwright is no stranger to the business. Bloody Mother F*****g A*****e — an image best not taken literally — is her first release since 1997's eponymous EP, and if it's any indication of the soon to be released full-length — also eponymous — it heralds the coming of yet another original voice from one of music's most dependable gene pools. Wainwright's husky voice has matured into a thing of real beauty, and her ability to sound both majestic and totally wrecked helps to humanize each track — especially the title cut — without sacrificing any of the volatile confidence that fuels lines like "Poetry has no place for a heart's that's a whore." Unlike her showier brother, her arrangements are simple and stripped down, lending weight to her femme fatale lyricism and wry introspection. Wainwright is obviously an old soul — she cracks like Bonnie Tyler, breezes over notes like Björk and croons with the kind of weary sensuality that most artist's don't discover until their golden years — but her style is just as informed by contemporaries like PJ Harvey and Cat Power as it is by Patsy Cline, and when she says jump, the listener's immediate response is "how high?"