Vera Sola, Shades

[Spectraphonic, November 9]

The three kick-drum beats followed by a snap of snare drum and tambourine—a.k.a. the “Be My Baby” beat—that punctuate the ethereal layers of organ on album opener “Virgil’s Flowers” tell you everything you need to know about Vera Sola’s ghostly approach to midcentury pop Americana. More cinematic than Lana Del Rey but equally elegiac, Vera Sola is a longtime member of Elvis Perkins’ band whose debut album, Shades, combines expansive, open-road spaghetti-Western guitars, funereal drumbeats, skeletal strings, and Sola’s vibrato-laden vocals for a sound like a cold wind through bare tree branches. This all sounds goth as hell—and it is, albeit more in an “Autoharp cover of Slayer’s ‘Raining Blood’” sort of way than the pounding industrial beats of an underground club. Zola Jesus takes care of that last part, with her remix of lead single “Colony” that transforms the lonesome Western vibes of the original into something with a much more metallic edge. [Katie Rife]

Marianne Faithfull, Negative Capability

[BMG, November 2]

A year after the Jagger-Richards song “As Tears Go By” catapulted Marianne Faithfull’s career—at the time an unplanned, superficial pop experiment—Faithfull got married, and the papers assured the public, not to worry, “Marianne will keep singing.” No one had any idea how right they’d be. Nine lives, 50-plus years, and several iconic artistic evolutions later, Faithfull has just released her 21st studio album, Negative Capability, at age 71, and it confirms she is still one of folk-rock’s most distinct, brutally honest voices, conveying a lifetime of love and loss in every gravelly syllable. Negative Capability’s arrangements are stark yet warm, as are Faithfull’s poetic reflections here on time and friends gone. Severe arthritis prevents her from touring or moving about much, but Marianne will keep singing, all right. Not only that, she’ll continue to find new depths to her expression. As she recently put it to The Guardian: “You try and fucking stop me.” [Kelsey J. Waite]

 
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