Marianne Faithfull – Easy Come, Easy Go

Marianne Faithfull

It’s called Easy Come, Easy Go but this is a difficult album to like. “Like” is too small a word for this perfectionist collection of songs and musicians - all classics and masters in their own right, and all eager to create new masterpieces through their association with Marianne Faithfull. You will not like this album: you will either love it or hate it.

Personally, I love it. More Marmite than Mars Bar, it includes an eclectic mix of soul, blues, country and jazz numbers from writers as diverse as Morrissey and Dolly Parton.

Guest musicians include rocker Keith Richards (renewing the longstanding relationship between Marianne and the Rolling Stones), folk superstars Kate and Anna McGarrigle and Rufus Wainwright, to name but the most famous stars in the constellation. Marianne Faithfull is old-school, and cannot be compared to today’s singer-songwriters such as Amy Winehouse or Laura Marling. She only ever does cover versions - but again, “cover” is too small a word. In the sleeve notes she’s called an “interpreter of songs” and that is exactly what she does. She interprets them as only an older woman can, having loved and lost, been betrayed and jilted, seen enough of the nasty side of human nature. Her deep manly voice carries the full range of emotions, and develops characters in many of the songs which tell stories. She conveys the despair of a jilted woman whose fatherless baby is stillborn, the dark secrets of a paedophile murderer and also the tender hopes of lovers in ‘There’s a Place for Us’ and the high camp of Morrissey’s ‘Dear God Please Help Me’.

There are examples of almost all music genres in this collection - soul, folk, country, jazz. This might be a sampler, proving the versatility and musical accomplishment of a woman who has the perfect diction of Petula Clark and the vocal power of Dusty Springfield as well as the pulling-power to persuade the very best session musicians to join her comeback.

Each song is beautifully orchestrated, with a big, full sound different every time yet somehow locking together to make a coherent album. You might want to download just your favourite track (mine is the Morrissey number - track 4 on disc 2. It sounds deceptively short and simple but the melodramatic orchestration lends a touch of dark humour and the sexy lyrics gain in spiciness when you realise that Marianne is old enough to be your gran!)

If you listen to the whole album a few times it will grow on you as an album, a statement by a woman who was famous as a muse, a girlfriend and a singer of other people’s songs. The statement says “I’m still here ” and “I’ve still got it”. In that sense you might think, if you wanted to poke fun, that it is not the Mars bar but the Cadbury’s Caramel that symbolises this new Marianne (look at the advert with the fancy female hare batting her eyelashes at the tortoise). However I have no wish to poke fun. This is a serious musical achievement. It is not music for girls who’ve been dumped by their boyfriends (try Dido). These songs sound sad but yet provide sustenance for your soul.

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