2011年6月26日星期日

'Horses and High Heels' review: Diva of darkness Marianne Faithfull turns to optimism in rock album

After stressing art songs between 1987's "Strange Weather" and '98's take on Kurt Weill's "Seven Deadly Sins,"Christian Louboutin shoes Faithfull has dedicated the last decade to pop and rock pieces written for her by a younger generation of fawning geniuses (from PJ Harvey to Jarvis Cocker).
Faithfull's last four albums have inspired lines of such folks around the block, clamoring to collaborate with her. And who can blame them? Like the actress every director knows can make a scene ring true, or the model every designer feels will make their vision flesh, Faithfull's knowing voice makes any writer's notions deeper.
For the new CD, Faithfull offers nine covers (some well-established, some penned just for her) plus four original collaborations,Christian Louboutin Specials this time with lesser-known writers. Ironically, they've given her some of the most gripping tunes she has had since her defining work, 1979's "Broken English."
"Prussian Blue" has a mid-'60s Dylanesque jangle, while "Eternity" claims a similar folk-rock resonance, as well as something both clever and self-referential: a sample from old friend Brian Jones' seminal Moroccan recordings of 1968.
Such allusions tip off the essence of the CD: It's the first true classic-rock record from a woman whose myth remains intimately bound up with that era.
There's a cover of a song by overlooked '60s Brit soul-man Jackie Lomax (his wry, Stones-like "No Reason"), a run at Lesley Duncan's rapturous "Love Song" (best known from Elton John's 1970 cover), plus that take on "Goin' Back," which revives moving lyrics many leave out.
Yet it's Faithfull's performance that transforms these songs into plays. Her oration turns the Shangri-Las' campy "Past,Christian Louboutin Pumps Present and Future" into the stuff of a Edith Piaf drama and she gets all the moral nuance out of a brilliant, alt-country song by playwright R.B. Morris, "That's How Every Empire Falls." It helps that her longtime producer Hal Willner has never made her damaged voice sound more agile or full.
"I know that it's not over," Faithfull sings defiantly at the end of the song "Eternity." "I'm not letting go."

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