Vagabond Ways

1999 album, her first of contemporary new material in four years. Includes compositions by Roger Waters, Elton John & Bernie Taupin, Daniel Lanois and Leonard Cohen, plus new songs written by Faithfull, Frank McGuiness and Barry Reynolds. 10 tracks.

"Oh, doctor please. I drink and I take drugs. I love sex and I move around a lot." These are the opening words of this album, and as the summation of a gloriously misspent youth, they're kind of hard to beat, cementing Marianne Faithfull's claim to the title of Greatest Living Englishwoman. Her first album since 20th Century Blues offers up a diverse collection of material. An old Roger Waters composition, "Incarceration of a Flower Child," opens with a musical phrase he would revisit, 15 years later, in "Your Possible Pasts" (from the Final Cut album). Faithfull interprets it as a simple lament to lost innocence, the days of "good dope and cheap wine"--though its chorus rather deliberately punctures the dream ("It's gonna get old in the 1970s"). And with its mocking air of self-pity, its ruined grandeur, Leonard Cohen's "Tower of Song" might have been written with her in mind. But it's that title track and "Electra," two ruthless slices of self-examination ("You'd think she owns the streets of Dublin"), which truly compel attention. Singular, magnificent. --Andrew McGuire