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May 26 - June 2, 2000

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** Marianne Faithfull

VAGABOND WAYS

(Instinct/It)

Marianne Faithful 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
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