Loudon Wainwright III

Listeners who are likely to find Grown Man most satisfying are those who have been waiting
24 years for Loudon Wainwright III to record a follow-up to Dead Skunk. Where so much of
his subsequent material has been as serious as a heart attack (or at least a divorce), his new
album returns to the novelty vein that gave him his only semihit. In "IWIWAL" ("I wish I was a
lesbian"), the proudly insensitive singer/songwriter gets in touch with his femini... More >

In a music where scions of the upper-middle class are supposed to camouflage their cultural impoverishment, one of the many irritating things about L-III is that he's never bothered. Another is his great subject, which boils down to divorce whether the metaphor is his kids or his mom or his waitress. Here, however, the metaphor surpasses itself on at least four songs--about a jerk doing the women's-lib hustle after the porch door has closed, a philandering father and his faithless son, who then becomes a father who meets his daughter on her first birthday, and an older daughter who gets the last word because her father scripts it for her. "That Hospital," which is about life and death, is where his belated maturity comes from. Don't bet it lasts. (Grade: A-)