Aside from jazz singers, interpretive singing is almost a lost art
— previous generations had Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett to
bring something of their own to others’ material. (Besides, some
singers shouldn’t write everything they record, nor should they record
everything they write. Ahem.)
The latest album by singer, actress, and former Rolling Stones
associate Marianne Faithfull — her first since 2005 — is in
the tradition of Sinatra. Easy Come Easy Go was recorded
virtually live in the studio (Sinatra insisted on being in the studio
the same time as the musicians, btw) and like Ol’ Blue Eyes at his
best, she takes a dozen songs of others and virtually makes them hers.
Smokey Robinson’s “Ooh Baby Baby” is transformed into a gothic (in the
old-school sense, not Cure/Bauhaus) mini-opera, Faithfull’s weathered
warble mining the song’s aching drama while alternating the spotlight
with, then joining, Antony Hegarty’s Bryan Ferry-like croon. The Duke
Ellington chestnut “Solitude” is revamped as an R&B ballad, Marc
Ribot’s guitar sighing in the background. “The Crane Wife” (with
harmony by Nick Cave) evokes the folk-rock/baroque splendor of
Faithfull’s ’60s recordings. The final track, Merle Haggard’s
end-of-the-line lament “Sing Me Back Home” (featuring Keith Richards),
contains more bittersweet nostalgia and redemptive yearning than most
of us will, thankfully, ever know, and by itself is worth the price of
admission. (Decca)
