A very talented singer, actress and author Marianne Faithfull

Marianne Faithfull is one of the most interesting and unusual artists in Great Britain. She is not only an heir of a noble baron generation one of the representatives of which was an Austrian nobleman Leopold von Sacher-Masoch after whose book the term ‘masochism’ appeared in the world. She is in the first place a very talented singer, actress and author with whom a great number of celebrities have worked including David Bowie, Angelo Badalamenti, PJ Harvey, the band Metallica and many others. She has played in many theatre performances in London and Dublin, and her music career continues for more than four decades already. This year Marianne’s 22nd album Easy Come, Easy Go is released and pretends to become one of her most successful creations although it contains practically no new songs. The record Easy Come, Easy Go is a collection of covers of other authors’ songs chosen by Marianne herself and her long-term friend and producer Hal Willner, performed in her marvelous unique manner with the accompaniment of a small band.

No failure tracks on Easy Come, Easy Go

In 1987 one of Marianne Faithfull’s most successful works Strange Weather was released and then for the first time Hal Willner became its producer to later join the singer on the recording of the 1990’s album Blazing Away. Regarding these past achievements the tandem has had quite a difficult task on Easy Come, Easy Go and has carried it out brilliantly. One of the versions of Easy Come, Easy Go consists of 10 tracks and another, complete with a DVD, is 18 tracks long. The album opens with Dolly Parton’s calm song Down From Dover, and a little bit faster and worrisome Hold On Hold On is refined with unbelievable guitar chords. One can find here Billie Holiday’s composition Solitude, rather hard for perception but performed excellently with Faithfull’s somewhat creaky vocals and Nick Cave joins her on The Crane Wife 3. The title track Easy Come, Easy Go written by Bessie Smith has become the real refinement of the collection due to an amazing complicated instrumental background bearing a jazz spirit. Rufus Wainwright’s vocals have added emotions to Children Of Stone making it one of the album highlights and Morrissey’s song Dear God Please Help Me proves to be as close to Marianne herself as no other. On the whole there are no failure tracks on the record as absolutely each of them is complicated, interesting and has acquired a new life in Miss Faithfull’s original interpretation.

Marianne is always ready to please us with her inimitable music

There is no doubt that Marianne Faithfull does what she can do best. As any creative personality she gives a lot of her strength to songwriting, material recording and performing. The work on Easy Come, Easy Go started last December but some months later Marianne’s representative’s stated that she had to take a rehabilitation course because of mental and nervous exhaustion. Taking into account that the singer turns 61 years old this year nobody got surprised at the news. Besides her reputation was not crystal at a young age because of a drug addiction. Fortunately today this woman remarkable in every way can even boast that she has recovered from an early stage breast cancer in less than two months. By the way this and many other events are described in Faithfull’s memoirs of which she has recently put out the second volume already. She is now again full of strength and will soon start her tour in support of the new album. Considering the fact that Easy Come, Easy Go offers no new material we can guess that a new surprise from Marianne is waiting for us as she is always ready to please us with her inimitable music.

Alexandra Zachernovskaya
28.11.2008