Marianne Faithfull has a new album on the way, in collaboration with Warren Ellis.
Titled She Walks In Beauty, it follows Faithfull’s 2018 album Negative Capability, which was also a collaboration with Ellis. Nick Cave plays piano across the album, while cellist Vincent Ségal also contributes across the record. Brian Eno created sound textures for the tracks ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ and ‘The Bridge Of Sighs’.
Faithfull recorded the album at the beginning of 2020’s COVID-19 lockdowns, working with Ellis to produce songs based on poems by Shelley, Keats, Byron, Wordsworth, Tennyson and Thomas, a press release says. Faithfull was hospitalised with COVID-19 in March following the recording of the album and, as the press release notes, was left struggling for her life.
Of her poetry choices, Faithfull says: "I wasn’t in doubt. I’ve been thinking about it for so long, this album, it’s been in my head for so long, I think I really knew exactly what I wanted. I just picked the poems I really loved, and I can’t help but say I think I was very lucky. We got it."
BMG will release She Walks In Beauty on April 30, 2021.