In place of the melodramatic sonic architects who helmed her earlier records – John Cale Todd Rundgren Jimmy

In place of the melodramatic sonic architects who helmed her earlier records – John Cale, Todd Rundgren, Jimmy Iovine – Gone Again is produced by long-serving guitarist Lenny Kaye with Malcolm Burn, who helps bring a more intimate presence and depth to the arrangements, most successfully on “Beneath the Southern Cross”, an ode to non-being (!) in which Tom Verlaine’s almost subliminal lead guitar notes can just be discerned, delicately rippling the meniscus of Kaye’s hypnotic rhythm guitar It’s a beautifully understated piece. Not that it’s stopped her, of course.There is no shortage of stylistic variety here, though. “Dead to the World” is a sort of spooked hoe-down, “Fireflies” is a lilting lullaby and “Ravens” possesses the kind of hillbilly menace that might make it a candidate for the next Nick Cave covers album. Smith acknowledges the danger of her doomy absorption in a suitably apocalyptic cover of Dylan’s “Wicked Messenger”, pointedly emphasising the line “If you cannot bring good news, then don’t bring any”.

One is left feeling a little too intrusive into someone else’s grief, as if having wandered by mistake into the wrong funeral. This illustrates the leitmotif of his entire career – that all objects have an interrelated continuity within the human psyche.”Modern art isn’t easy,” he says. “I remember Freddy Ayer [the logical positivist] telling me he found modern art very confusing. He longed for a big book on modern aesthetics so he could look up everything to see if I had the right amount of classifications and points.

It just doesn’t work that way, does it?”n Masterclass, Edinburgh College of Art 15-26 July (lnfo: 0131-221 6111). ‘Paolozzi Collages’, Talbot Rice Art Gallery, Edinburgh (0131-650 2211) from 7 Aug. On the London stage now are two deeply divergent approaches to classic texts. At the Gate: a Roman comedy in a free, updated adaptation which arranges a calculatedly queasy clash between values then and now. At the Pit: a Greek tragedy in a production of such purist rigour and cultural empathy that you are handed a sprig of thyme rather than a programme on the way in. Programmes, as potential distractions, are banned until the end.