LOUDON WAINWRIGHT III

His first album of new original songs since 2014's Haven't Got The Blues Yet, Lifetime Achievement finds LWIII in a state of deep reflection at age 75, over a set of 15 recently written, insightful and incisive gems that he wasn't even planning to pen.

Says Wainwright, "I remember when I made my first record for Atlantic in 1969. I was always saying, 'I want it to be a record – not only a recording, but a document that captures a moment.' I was 21 and very serious, and I thought I'd be dead in four years (laughs). So I wanted to make something that would last. A testament. Now, fifty years later, I guess I still want to make a testament. I want to write a group of songs and get them down in the best possible way. And I like to think they might last a while." After thirty albums, a Grammy, many film and TV credits, and songs recorded by such artists as Johnny Cash, Mose Allison, Bonnie Raitt and his son Rufus, Wainwright is perhaps our foremost six-string analyst and tragicomedian. And with Lifetime Achievement his "unmatched wit and wisdom" (NPR) has never been on sharper display.