** Marianne Faithfull
VAGABOND WAYS
(Instinct/It)
Marianne Faithfull's
voice is a cautionary tale, the audible equivalent of one of those health-class
slides that show the effects of bourbon, unfiltered Camels, and heaven knows
what else on a maltreated internal organ. It hasn't improved any since her
early-'80s resurgence, but it hasn't gotten worse either: throughout
Vagabond Ways, she hits the notes she needs to, without obvious recourse
to Cher-style techno-morphing (though Emmylou Harris injects some backing
sucrose into one track).
Anyway, the successes here depend more on narrative than on melody.
"Incarceration of a Flower Child," penned by Pink Floyd's Roger Waters 30 years
ago but unrecorded until now, moves rapidly from "a haze of good dope and cheap
wine" to an asylum-bound "three square sedations a day," using the singer's
personal Altamont as a generational case study and warning, "It's gonna get
cold in the 1970s." This song and "Wanting You," an Elton John/Bernie Taupin
mini-aria penned expressly for Faithfull, are by far the disc's best moments.
The Celtic-tinged "Electra" and "Wilder Shores of Love" cast Faithfull as an
anti-Enya, with guitarist Barry Reynolds and keyboardist Glen Patscha smoothed
into nonexistence by Mark Howard's swirly production. Three collaborations with
Daniel Lanois founder as well; the worst is the melodically vapid "Marathon
Kiss," which fails to build on its intriguing title.
Vagabond Ways ends with two good ideas that don't quite come off: on
both Leonard Cohen's "Tower of Song" and the mostly spoken "After the
Ceasefire" (co-written by Irish dramatist Frank McGuinness), the singer's
stilted delivery fails to squeeze much meaning from the well-chosen texts.
Although Faithfull deserves kudos for sustaining a recording career far longer
than her well-known personal troubles would have suggested, it may be that her
interpretive gifts are suited better to the cabaret material of other recent
albums (20th Century Blues) than to the adult-contemporary contexts she
makes do with here.
-- Franklin Bruno