Ms. Smith has a striking new release out. It’s called The Coral Sea and stands as audio documentation of two separate live performances she did in collaboration with My Bloody Valentine guitarist Kevin Shields. Named and inspired from Smith’s 1996 book The Coral Sea, the performances served as tributes to the late artist Robert Mapplethorpe, who was Smith’s close friend (Mapplethorpe took the Horses album cover photo).

In each reading, Smith recasts Mapplethorpe’s life as a deathbound sea journey to the Southern Cross, a conceit which allows her to fill the work with evocative allusions to his photography while at the same time stirringly mourn his death. It’s a moving work to say the least, intensified only by Shields’ improvisational guitar which rises and falls in union with Smith’s dramatic delivery. Her voice, that unmistakable voice, functions to transcend Mapplethorpe’s particular story into a universal experience. Highly Recommended.