Tonight's Headlines: Sampras Rewrites Tennis History; Cardinals Cool Off Giants; CBS News and VH1 Singing Same Tune Under Viacom; Pope Denounces Gay Pride Parade; Gates and Drug Companies to Help Poor; Professors and Student in Thesis Clash; "Brother" Gears Up for Long Summer, and Marianne Faithfull Has Not Lost Her Vagabond Ways.
Well, obviously. You don't star in films with sparse dialogue, such as Jack Cardiff's 1968 faux-porn disaster, Girl on a Motorcycle, and just up and lose your vagabond ways. Nor do you console yourself by purchasing lots of satin Anello & David shoes when the Sussex Police find you wrapped in nothing but a fur rug at Keith Richard's acid party-- only to lose your vagabond ways thirty years later. But you might reestablish yourself as a mainstream singer/songwriter by recording an adult-contemporary album on which you sound like an aging drag queen.
But what an aging drag queen! Faithfull's signature nicotine-scorched vocal chords can brand even the most banal lyrics with edgy texture and emotional impact. Faithfull is in total control as her husky throat empties out delicately at the end of each phrase, producing a quality that sounds like a little girl's voice put through the most extreme weathering imaginable. Imagine Cyndi Lauper's thin, angular vocals in "Time after Time" after several decades of smoking two packs of Lucky Strikes a day. Now wash it down with a Kurt Weill fascination and ample scotch: "Then you say, go slow/ I fall behind/ The second hand unwinds..."
But stop weeping-- Faithfull didn't record a version of "Time after Time" on Vagabond Ways. Instead, she's resorted to attacking Leonard Cohen's "Tower of Song" and Roger Waters' previously unreleased "Incarceration of a Flower Child." Faithfull's at her current best on self-penned numbers like the catchy title track, but sadly, the quality of her writing misses the knowing tenor of her voice on "Wilder Shores of Love" and "Marathon Kiss." The instrumental arrangements here are weak throughout, too, tossing in clunky string sections and dated keyboards. The underwater synth-gun effect-- a sound that seems, miraculously, from both the '70s and the future-- is showcased in the Roger Waters number. And not surprisingly, "For Wanting You" (which Elton John wrote specifically for Faithfull) and the spoken-word extravaganza, "After the Ceasefire," are both unbearable.
I'm guessing you'd have better judgment than to spend your money on Vagabond Ways without me having to tell you not to. But the album is darker and grittier than most major-label adult-contemporary albums, so it might interest your parents-- if only to make them feel young and pure in comparison to Faithfull's thousand years. At this point in her career, Faithfull's been down the road and back again, but she hasn't run out of things to say. She's even developed a striking vehicle though which to say them, as her raspy voice seems to speak of the human experience with each syllable. You hardly notice the lyrics, and forgive her merely passable songwriting. Faithfull, whose look at the times has resembled Meryl Streep, David Bowie, Jane Fonda, and Markie Post, now looks more like a mummified Courtney Love, and her songs certainly suggest she's "lived through this."
