Martha Wainwright

Opera House, Cork

Tonight 7.30pm €30 021-4270022; Róisín Dubh, Galway Tomorrow 8pm €30 091-586540; Pepper Canister Church, Dublin Sun/Mon 7.30pm €30 (sold out) 0818-719300

The weight of expectation has gradually lifted from Martha Wainwright’s slim shoulders, and it isn’t before time. Wainwright began in the late 1990s not as a singer-songwriter in her own right, but as the daughter of Loudon Wainwright III and Kate McGarrigle, and the younger sister of Rufus.

Slowly but surely, Martha has broadened her reach via her self-titled 2005 debut album and her 2008 breakthrough, I Know You’re Married But I’ve Got Feelings Too. It’s been relatively plain sailing from the late Noughties onwards, with sell-out shows and pithy performances from here to there and back again.

Wainwright’s latest album, Come Home to Mama, was wrought out of life (the birth of her first child) and loss (the death of her mother), and so arrives here with its own emotional, sometimes vituperative dynamic. Careful those of you with a front-row seat. Just saying.

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CITY HALL Fri/Sat/Sun, Dublin