Marianne Faithfull is releasing a new album later this year, She Walks In Beauty, which was recorded toward the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown, a time period in which the singer was hospitalized with the virus and thankfully recovered.

It’s an album of poetry set to music, with Faithfull drawing from the works of Lord Byron, Tennyson, John Keats, William Wordsworth, and more, and she worked on it with Warren Ellis, who just put out an album this week with his frequent collaborator Nick Cave. Cave pops up on Faithfull’s album, as well, as does Brian Eno, cellist Vincent Ségal, and producer Head.

“I wasn’t in doubt,” Faithfull said about the album. “I’ve been thinking about it for so long, this album, it’s been in my head for so long, I think I really knew exactly what I wanted. I just picked the poems I really loved, and I can’t help but say I think I was very lucky. We got it.”

Faithfull’s most recent album was 2018’s Negative Capability.

The first track Faithfull is sharing from the album is her interpretation of Lord Byron’s “She Walks In Beauty.” “It’s very romantic, not like you imagine Byron to be,” Faithfull said in a press release. “It’s so beautiful, and that’s why I like it. I love the other side of Byron too, but this is really amazing, sublime. And I was very drawn to the ability to do really beautiful rhymes. I think that’s from being a songwriter. It’s incredibly nice. Not what I connect with Lord Byron at all.”

Listen below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “She Walks In Beauty” (Lord Byron)
02 “The Bridge Of Sighs” (Thomas Hood)
03 “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” (John Keats)
04 “Ode To A Nightingale” (John Keats)
05 “Ode To Autumn” (John Keats)
06 “Ozymandias” (Percy Bysshe Shelley)
07 “From The Prelude” (William Wordsworth)
08 “Surprised By Joy” (Williams Wordsworth)
09 “To The Moon” (Percy Bysshe Shelley)
10 “So We’ll Go No More A Roving” (Lord Byron)
11 “The Lady Of Shalott” (Lord Tennyson)

She Walks In Beauty is out 4/30. Pre-order it here.