| Folk |
It has been eleven years since Suzanne Vega last graced us with an album of new creations, but come this spring, that long wait will finally be over. Her forthcoming album, produced by longtime collaborator Gerry Leonard, whose illustrious career includes work with David Bowie, Rufus Wainwright, Laurie Anderson, and Duncan Sheik—promises to be a work of depth and resonance.
“Each song on the album unfolds within an atmosphere of struggle,” Vega explains. “A struggle to survive, to express oneself, to dominate, to win, to escape, to help another, or simply to live.”
As is often the case, Suzanne Vega’s new album is deeply political, yet this in no way diminishes her keen poetic sensibility. She wields her pen with the same elegance that has captivated listeners since the late 1980s, an elegance that continues to enchant her devoted audience worldwide. Across these ten new tracks, she embarks on a profound poetic introspection, exploring the pressing questions that inhabit her mind. Among these, the haunting “Last Train for Mariupol” stands as a testament to her enduring concern for the fate of her contemporaries. While others may attempt to rewrite history, she pours her deepest emotions and thoughts into words chosen with exquisite precision, evoking in us a profound emotional response.
Musically, too, the album is a triumph. Those who have followed Suzanne Vega’s career will recall her forays into rock, and this album, through its exquisite musical arrangements, subtly recalls the many chapters of her artistic journey.
She describes the first single, Speakers’ Corner, as a “California song, perfect for driving down the highway,” though its urgent subject matter stands in stark contrast to this apparent lightness. With prescient insight, Vega captures the increasingly political nature of modern communication, an era in which it has never been easier to voice an opinion on social media, and yet in which this privilege is all too often misused. “Speakers’ corner, there it stands/ In politics and song/ I guess we better use it now before we find it gone,” she sings in the final refrain. “What we must never allow in a democracy is the disappearance of Speakers’ Corner, that space where every voice may be heard. We live in an age of incessant speech, yet too often devoid of logic or truth. People should be held accountable for their words. They cannot simply lie. One would think that should be self-evident.”
Originally, Speakers’ Corner was inspired by a more personal crisis: in 2023, Vega’s husband, a spoken word poet and First Amendment lawyer, had barely recovered from COVID-19 when he suffered two strokes that left him voiceless, forced to relearn the very act of speech. This fragile negotiation between silence and expression became a central motif in Flying With Angels.
Understanding these circumstances is essential to grasping the urgency of this album. With Suzanne Vega, nothing is left to chance. If one considers what I regard as one of her finest albums, An Evening of New York, still in rotation on Bayou Blue Radio—one will recognize a similar approach in Flying With Angels, where folk, rock, and even the fringes of jazz are employed as needed to serve the text, heightening the intended dramatic effect.
An indispensable album from an artist whose songs we will never tire of hearing, especially in an era where the pop and rock landscapes so often lack the intellectual depth and rigor that Vega embodies. We salute her for it!
Thierry De Clemensat
USA correspondent – Paris-Move and ABS magazine
Editor in chief Bayou Blue Radio, Bayou Blue News
PARIS-MOVE, March 9th 2025
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