Suzanne Vega
Flying With Angels
★★★★
COOKING VINYL
An acute observer, Suzanne Vega has always taken her time with each album, exploring in-depth the personal and cultural shifts around her. The 2010s saw her in a reflective groove with the Americana and tarot wisdom of 2014’s Tales In The Realm Of The Queen Of Pentacles, and the gossipy ’40s literary world of Lover, Beloved: Songs From An Evening With Carson McCullers (2016). Though a fond tribute to a great American writer, the latter sounded a little like Vega was treading water, musically.
By contrast, Vega’s first album in a decade takes an abrupt turn, infused with a vibrancy and political urgency that is very ‘now’. Tracks like Speakers Corner and Witch see her responding to the disinformation space with an elegant snarl. “We’re living in a state of permanent emergency,” she sings, wrapping razor sharp lyrics and rising panic in chiming guitar distortion. Produced by Gerry Leonard (Rufus Wainwright, Laurie Anderson), the album voices both intense frustration and heartbreaking lament. Last Train From Mariupol for instance, with its stately beauty, bandura-style guitar and haunting vocals from her daughter Ruby Froom, is particularly poignant.
In careful use light and shade, Chambermaid is an upbeat homage to Bob Dylan, a chat with her male muse, written from the perspective of the chambermaid in his 1965 song I Want You. There is a mischievous glee, too, in the laconic, lo fi loops of Lucinda, a celebration of musician Lucinda Williams that’s driven by swaggering yet insightful lyrics: “Leatherette pants/Rhinestone tail/Strong and proud/A little bit frail.”
What’s striking is how Vega finds her way out of the chaos and dark conundrums that underlie the opening track, and the dystopian new wave New York-style rush of Rats, where “survival of the fittest is never very pretty.” She explores transcendence as a necessary force and solution. Love Thief, for instance, which is realised (by a stroke of genius) as a slow, spacey soul jam. Here, a mythical Isaac Hayes figure wraps up all the anxious folk in a spiritual bear hug. Drawing on sensual beats, her vocals enriched by bluesy backing singer Catherine Russell, it shows how effortlessly Vega can incorporate R&B to that folk sensibility and create something unique.
With its silvery guitar and tentative vision of collective power, the title track also offers a means of escape. It frames an album that, in its own determined way, boldly meets the moment. “Glad I’m not flying alone,” Vega sings. We’re thoroughly glad too.
Flying With Angels is out May 2 on Cooking Vinyl.
ORDER: Amazon | Rough Trade | HMV
Tracklisting:
Speakers' Corner
Flying With Angels
Witch
Chambermaid
Love Thief
Lucinda
Last Train From Mariupol
Alley
Rats
Galway
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