*** Loudon Wainwright III

LITTLE SHIP

(Charisma)

Loudon Wainwright isn't aging very well, which is good news for his art. His droll little songs of trepidation and perplexity have grown richer now that getting older has become a permanent subtext. Not that he's all that direct about it: only one of the 15 originals here, "The Birthday Present II," addresses that feeling of sentimental dread one gets when realizing that there's more -- much more -- life behind than ahead. But this feeling whiffs through the various one-more-broken-relationship songs, heightens the sense of improbability that he has actually raised children on "Bein' a Dad" ("You got to shoe 'em and clothe 'em/And try not to loathe 'em"), and adds a patina of absurdity to the social-commentary parody "Mr. Ambivalent" (a "Nowhere Man" for people who can't decide which socks to wear). It's all oddly heartening -- here's a man heading toward the far side of middle age and he's still obsessing over the inflections his lover leaves on his message machine ("OGM"). Wainwright has always sounded cleverly cranky, but now he's starting to sound weirdly wise. He knows that the small sufferings never end -- and that that in itself is pretty damn funny.

-- Richard C. Walls