Marianne Faithfull and Warren Ellis have teamed up for the new album She Walks in Beauty.
Slated for release on 30 April via BMG, She Walks in Beauty is an album of music and poetry recorded before and after a period of lockdown. For the LP, Faithfull pulled inspiration from English Romantic poets, who she studied during her A Levels at St Joseph’s Convent School in Reading. Recorded from her London home, the instrumentals were then put together by Ellis from his Paris studio, where he worked in isolation over lockdown.
Many tracks feature Cave on piano, whilst Brian Eno has contributed to La Belle Dame sans Merci and The Bridge of Sighs. Cellist Vincent Ségal has added parts to To The Moon, and Byron’s So We’ll Go No More A-Roving.
“I didn’t think of them as songs,” Ellis says on the collaboration. “I wasn’t locked into melodies or chords. I could take incredible liberties. It wasn’t about creating something that had to follow the text or outline it – it was free in that respect. The important thing was that it didn’t get in the way.”
“My preferred way of making music is to leave a lot of it to chance, to let accidents happen. I’ve been moving away from structures in things. This music is me attempting to push forward. I think it’s as good as anything I’ve ever done, in terms of the spirit of it and the process I went through to make it.”
Check out the new tracklist and artwork below.
Tracklist
1. She Walks in Beauty (Lord Byron)
2. The Bridge of Sighs (Thomas Hood)
3. La Belle Dame sans Merci (John Keats)
4. Ode to a Nightingale (John Keats)
5. To Autumn (John Keats)
6. Ozymandias (Percy Bysshe Shelley)
7. The Prelude: Book One Introduction (William Wordsworth)
8. Surprised by Joy (William Wordsworth)
9. To The Moon (Percy Bysshe Shelley)
10. So We’ll Go No More a Roving (Lord Byron)
11. The Lady of Shallot (Lord Alfred Tennyson)
