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Album Review
by SashaS
16-2-2002
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More on: Marianne Faithfull
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| Faithfull 'Kissin Time' |
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Marianne Faithfull: 'Kissin Time'
(Hut)
Marianne Faithfull offers the most autobiographical album you’ll hear in decades
Marianne Faithfull, that’s a lady, a survivor, an “Angel with big tits” (© Andrew Loog Oldham, the Rolling Stones original manager) whose biography is fit for a book, so she wrote one, ‘Faithfull’ (back in 1994). Her story goes from being the most feted beauty of her day, a girlfriend to a famous rock star (Mick Jagger), a film-star (‘Girl On A Motorcycle’ is a cult arthouse-cum-soft-porn), a junkie and a dropout, recovered and creating…
She refers to herself as a ‘Queen Mum of Bohemia’ and it is reasonable to assume that she’s told it all. But, apparently not as ‘Kissin Time’ is her most autobiographical since the comeback LP, ‘Broken English’, in 1979. Thus, she’s dug deeper into her life with a help of some rather fine collaborators, more contemporary than herself. Here we have Damon Albarn and the rest of Blur, Beck, Billy Corgan (ex-Smashing Pumpkins), Dave Stewart (of Eurythmics) and Jarvis Cocker of Pulp.
A song written for her by Cocker, ‘Sliding Through Life On Charm’, concludes: “I wonder why the schools don’t teach anything useful these days/Like how to fall from grace/And slide with elegance from a pedestal/I never asked to be on in the first place.” An idol’s fate, eh? One of Beck’s three tracks on the album, ‘Nobody’s Fault’, suggests that her mistakes were all her own and the song nails it shut.
But, one of the most amazing songs on the album is about the Velvet Underground’s ‘original’ and tragic singer; ‘Song For Nico’ tells the story of a life that, incredibly, mirrors Marianne’s. Here, as on the whole disc, Ms Faithfull sings in a deep, nicotine-stained voice, lived-in delivered and frequently sounding like Weimar-period cabaret is fused with the zeitgeist backing. It is dark, gothic, hypnotic, modern, timeless, unique…
There is no-one like Marianne Faithfull and although she might be an acquired taste these bland and manipulative days, her creativity comes from the depths of her soul-breaking experiences. I’d rather spend my time with this 53-year-old bird than many a babe half her age. We are talking music, here…
7.9/10
Live date:
10 March - Barbican, London
SashaS
16-2-2002
Marianne Faithfull’s album ‘Kissin Time’ is issued 04 March 2002 on Hut/Virgin
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