Marianne Faithfull. - Review - sound recording review

Interview, May, 2000 by Evelyn McDonnell

Vagabond Ways (Instinct)

In these tepidly pious, recovery-bound days, how refreshing it is to hear a woman declare, "I drink and I take drugs, I love sex and I move around a lot." The title track of Faithfull's first pop album in live years is not so much a cautionary tale as a reflective one, mournful but regretless. Collaborating with Barry Reynolds, Roger Waters, Emmylou Harris, and others, Faithfull goes deep where her 1994 autobiography went sensational. The lady is no mere survivor: She's a Delphic witness. These are her accounts of beauty and brutality, of melancholy without apology.