5 Loudon Wainwright III

Fame And Wealth

DEMON, 1983, FROM £7.79 You Say: “A stripped musical frame suits the sentiments of songs about booze, ageing and making mistakes.” Richard Emmitt, via e-mail His first studio album in five years, following the long fallout from 1978’s full-band failure Final Exam, Fame And Wealth found a strippeddown, acoustic Wainwright dealing in new levels of confessional honesty that moved from the unhappiness of the absent father on Five Years Old (“If you got some roses on your birthday/They’re from me”) to the world of the sleazy single man “out on the prowl” (Ingenue). But, at its best, as on the amazing and terrifying April Fools Day Morn, it captures the desperate, drunken sadness of the 37-year-old Wainwright coming to terms with his numerous flaws and failings.