On her first album in almost a decade, folk-pop icon Suzanne Vega daydreams her way into the mind of the chambermaid Bob Dylan addressed in his 1966 song, “I Want You”. The elegant title track of Flying with Angels breathes enigmatic life into a woman to whom Dylan described returning amid the chaos of his world because“she knows that I'm not afraid to look at her/ She is good to me and there’s/ Nothing she doesn't see/ She knows where I'd like to be…”
A perfect character for Vega, then. The New York singer-songwriter has always excelled at channelling life’s outsider observers: note the cool detachment of the solo coffee drinker in her 1984 single “Tom’s Diner” and how she lends her voice to an abused boy in her 1987 hit “Luka”. These are characters who meet the listener’s gaze without surrendering their agency and mystery. I grew up in thrall to her first three albums. On the walk home from school – if I wanted to keep my head up passing the popular kids – I’d play “Left of Centre” (1986), in which she charmed me into a state of nonchalant defiance I could only dream of attaining without her help. This was composure you could absorb and wear like a cloak. Only The Smiths were as good at making loneliness feel so exhilarating, and they were blokes with far fewer judgemental stares to deflect.
