Marianne Faithfull, Easy Come Easy Go By Amanda on January 18, 2009 8:07 PM | Permalink
Been listening to the new Marianne Faithfull long player, Easy Come Easy Go. I am going to jump straight to track 10 -- "Sing Me Back Home" with Keith Richards on harmony. A bit of music nerd fan fiction that is, the seamless colliding of a couple different musical-historical slipstreams. Keith and his history with the song via Gram*, his own haunting version from Toronto drug bust boot (that link is YouTube. I put up the MP3 for download at the end of the entry), the whole Marianne bio. Keith provides ghostly harmony on the chorus and some other words/phrases (plus guitar) and I spent a good while fiddling with the equaliser in iTunes to boost the vocals so I could cop a better listen. Their voices spiral towards each other like the smoke from two cigarettes, if you listen closely to the edges of Keith's phrases curl around Marianne's. Of course it's one of the greatest country songs, and she can sound a bit cabaret but always sincere. Marianne Faithfull as death row wretch works, but of course it is the almost-lullabyish promises of the chorus which make it a favourite for interpreting.
For the rest, on the concept and guests I'll just quote from the official blub:
All the songs have been chosen by Marianne and Hal [Wilner], and range from Billie Holiday's "Solitude" to "The Crane Wife" by current band The Decemberists. Other tracks are "Sing Me Back Home" by Merle Haggard, "Children of Stone" by Espers, the title track " Easy Come, Easy Go Blues" by Bessie Smith, Morrissey's "God Please Help Me", Dolly Parton's "Down from Dover " and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club's "Salvation". Easy Come, Easy Go also includes some interesting guest vocalists; Keith Richards appears on the aforementioned "Sing Me Back Home" Antony Hegarty on "Oo Baby Baby" and Jarvis Cocker on Sondheim's "Somewhere". Other guest appearances on the album come from Rufus Wainwright who contributes powerful vocals to "Children of Stone"' while his aunt and mother Kate and Anna McGarrigle enchant on the "The Flandyke shore". Warren Ellis plays his magic violin on 3 songs, and Nick Cave lends some vocals to "The Crane Wife". Sean Lennon and Teddy Thompson play guitar on a couple of the tracks, and Cat Power harmonizes on "Hold On, Hold On".
Not mentioned there, a cover of Randy Newman's creepy "In Germany Before the War."
I listened to it first without knowing much about the all star cast except for Keith, and it's a testament to the balanced production that I'd think "hm, that's interesting. I wonder who that is, if anybody" and want to look it up, rather than have the guesters smother the song with their presence. The exception to that would by the Smokey Robinson cover "Oo Baby" with Antony doing a wild R 'n' B thing but that's not a bad thing,Marianne Faithfull is allowed to get wild. Especially as the very frst track on the album is Dolly Parton's super-uber-tragic-miserydrama "Down from Dover." I think I'd prefer more restraint on the horns in this one, but it works better than I thought it would. Marianne Faithfull's voice is nothing if not the product of hard-won maturity, and the key to the song is the naivety of the teenage narrator (Dolly can sing it these days and still pass vocally for 18 more or less), but she made me believe. Other highlight's off the top of my head, the folk ballady "The Crane Wife 3" and "Flandyke Shore" and the playful jazzy excursions of the title track and "Black Coffee."
There aren't any songs on it I haven't liked, and I've been playing it mot of today back to back. I'm referring to the 2 disc version, there's also a 1 disc one that doesn't have all these songs.
* Good post. Deserves revisiting. As does that DVD.
MP3: Keith Richards, 1977 23-Sing-Me-Back-Home.mp3
