Martha Wainwright talks Leonard Cohen, motherhood and pints of plain in the latest Hot Press

Having just released possibly the finest album of her career with Goodnight City, Martha shared some of her thoughts about the record.

“This is a farewell to the past,” she nods. “However, I find the record more hopeful than a lot of my older ones. It’s a little lighter, a little brighter. When you write songs about your kids you want it to be nice.

“This latest album is probably more outward-looking, less navel gazing, than my first songs,” she says. “Starting out, I talked a lot about my struggles, my insecurities – my pain and my anger. People appreciated that at the time. Now, I am writing with a broader view.”

Wainwright also speaks candidly about her relationship with Lorca Cohen, daughter of the greatly mourned Leonard.

“He came to a bunch of my shows and we talked about music. I would hang out a lot in Lorca’s place and he would be upstairs [Cohen maintained an apartment above his daughter’s residence in Los Angeles]. He would come down and talk about the music business. [Cohen] would play me stuff. When he was doing ‘In My Secret Life’, he played it for me."

The full interview with Martha Wainwright will be available in the next issue of Hot Press magazine, on the shelves this Thursday, January 19.