Alongside music by the Australian composer and musician, the iconic singer recites well-known poems from Coleridge, Keats, Wordsmith and more, with addition sounds by friends Nick Cave, Brian Eno and cellist Vincent Ségal. This is a collection of some of the best known from the poetic canon, such as Ode To A Nightingale, To Autumn, Ozymandias, Wordsworth’s Prelude, Tennyson’s Lady Of Shallot. The music, mixing electronica, violin, cello, piano, birdsong and more, is variously beautiful, atmospheric, but sometimes a little distracting or a like something from a spa or meditation tape. Nevertheless, it does reach new and notable sounds – the music for Keats’s La Belle Dame Sans Merci is sharply strange, otherworldly and striking. But this album is really all about the words, and perhaps the most poignant of these poems are those that refer to fading of beauty and mortality, as the album was recorded just before and during the first Covid-19 lockdown during which Faithfull herself became infected and almost died of the disease. But happily she remains one of life’s great survivors. So on that note Byron’s She’ll Go No More A Roving and She Walks In Beauty, and perhaps most of all, Thomas Hood’s The Bridge of Sighs are the standouts, where her recital powerfully read, her voice clear, but a little fragile, cracking slightly like an exquisite vase. Out on Panta Rei / BMG
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