Pathos and Slapstick From Wainwright

Two decades or so later, folkie-with-attitude Loudon Wainwright III still evidences a split personality--half traditionally sensitive and embittered singer/songwriter, half hammy King of the Novelty Song. Either persona by itself would have been enough to warrant a trip to McCabe’s on Saturday, where the cult figure kicked off a two-night stand.

For pathos, there was a number about denial in the face of the finality of death, plus a cheerless Christmas tune about wars being fought near Christ’s birthplace. For slapstick, there was a corny ditty about phone sex, an amusing tale of LSD revisited, and an ode to the Sunday New York Times.

But Wainwright’s at his best not with the music-hall comedy bits nor the affecting heartbreakers, but with the material that uneasily integrates both his faces--”Be Careful, There’s a Baby in the House,” the weary “Lulla by,” the wickedly self-parodying “Too Old to Die Young.”

Perhaps the best, oddest song of all was “Shoulder Up That Bag,” a great anthem in which golf, no less, is made the stuff of archetypes and mythos. Even primed to laugh, the audience seemed hesitant to snicker at the metaphor of middle-aged Wainwright on his “last nine holes,” at least until he gave explicit permission by finally exaggerating his reading of the lines. There’s nothing par about Wainwright’s enduringly entertaining course.