Negative Capability is the upcoming twenty-first studio album by British singer and songwriter Marianne Faithfull. It is scheduled to be released on 2 November 2018. Produced by Rob Ellis, Warren Ellis and Head, confirmed collaborations include Nick Cave, Ed Harcourt, and Mark Lanegan. Described as her “most honest album”, songs on Negative Capability deal with themes of love, death, as well as terrorism and loneliness. Faithfull also re-recorded three of the most notable songs of her career for the album: “As Tears Go By”, “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”, and “Witches’ Song.
The album was first announced in December 2017 in Faithfull’s interview with UNCUT. The album’s title is a reference to the famous phrase “negative capability” used by Romantic poet John Keats in 1817 in a letter to his brothers.
Described by Faithfull as “the most honest record she’s ever made”, Negative Capability is to have a “folky” feel. “They Come at Night” was written with Mark Lanegan following the November 2015 Paris attacks. Faithfull said she got the idea from producer Hal Willner, and his theory that every seventy years the Nazis return in some form or another. She debuted the song during her concert at the Bataclan theatre in November 2016, a year after the terrorist attack took its place there.
Shot by Yann Orhan, the cover art for the album was released on 5 September 2018.
New Music United 