break
Negative Capability is considered one of the most emotionally powerful of Marianne’s 60-year recording career. Driven by her florid lyricism and reinterpretative skills, and bolstered by collaborators including Warren Ellis, Nick Cave, Rob Ellis, Ed Harcourt and Mark Lanegan, Negative Capability is charged with brutal honesty and autobiographical reflection as Marianne addressed losing old friends, her loneliness living in her adopted city of Paris, and love. The album was Marianne’s unflinchingly honest and relentlessly beautiful late-life masterpiece. The stark emotional heft, exquisitely framed by ornately sensitive musical backdrops can only be likened to the late-life works by Johnny Cash or Leonard Cohen. The record emphasises her unique place as a force of nature in modern music that started opening up after ‘Sister Morphine’ ignited her muse at the end of the 60’s. At that time Marianne had enjoyed her pop career with hits such as ‘Come And Stay With Me’ and ‘This Little Bird’, becoming the crown princess of the UK counterculture before grasping her artistic reins with the landmark Broken English in 1979.
Marianne was unsurpassed when it came to reinterpreting other people’s songs, she dug into the words to grip the composition’s heart then provided her own unique spin by injecting every syllable with clearly enunciated but gut level emotional response that made them her own. Marianne may not have been aware of it, but this process started with ‘As Tears Go By’ as she plugged into the songs character looking back at her life. She would revisit the song with the wisdom of a survivor on 1987’s Strange Weather and did so again to stunning effect on Negative Capability, where she sung it with the resonance of age and experience. Her love of Bob Dylan, who she hung out with on his 1965 UK tour, is continued with a new riveting version of ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’ which she first recorded on Rich Kid Blues back in 1971, and there’s also a remake of ‘Witches Song’ from Broken English – now interpreted as a psychedelic mantra.
In her long and storied career, Negative Capability saw Marianne composing songs with her musical collaborators more than on any previous album. Marianne’s lyrics reflect on her remarkable life on the desolately moving ‘No Moon In Paris’ over music sculpted by Ed Harcourt. Mark Lanegan supplied the tune for ‘They Come At Night’, which featured words from Marianne inspired by the attacks in Paris at the renowned Bataclan. After they had finished “wiping the blood off the walls” Marianne would give her final concert at the venue when it opened one year after the terror attacks.
The deluxe cd features a radio edit of ‘No Moon In Paris’ and an alternative version of ‘They Come At Night’.