Marianne Faithfull is still beautiful: Easy Come, Easy Go - 12 songs for music lovers

First, a few things you need to know:

Marianne Faithfull isn’t really a singer, not in any traditional sense and not after years of a multitude of abuses to her vocal chords, but sing she does. And thank God for that.
Hal Willner isn’t really a record producer, not in any traditional sense. But as an envoy - a bring-er together-er of all things unusual, diverse, and odd (especially artists and styles of music) - he is a brilliant collagist.
Marianne Faithfull is still gorgeous, still an exceptional performer and vocal stylist.
Hel Willner hasn’t lost his touch.
Together, they seem a match conjured up in dreams.

Now, here’s the rest:

Easy Come, Easy Go is their latest collaboration and to say it is damn near flawless wouldn’t quite do it the justice it so richly deserves. But because awe has a way of taking away the power of words, Easy Come, Easy Go is indeed, a damn near flawless record (and easily my favorite record so far this year).
In the classic cultural collagist style that Willner is the unrivaled master of Willner pairs Faithfull here with a bundle of diverse, exceptionally well written and beautifully arranged cover songs (a Willner-ian move that Rick Rubin emulated somewhat successfully in his work with Johnny Cash) as well as some perfect vocal pairings with other artists.
Faithfull, for her part, nails each performance with an uncanny sense of personal style and a breathy, weathered cabaret-eqsue delivery that wears her hard years living unusually well.
Everything Willner and Faithfull touch here seems to immediately turn to gold. Whether its Espers haunting baroque pop “Children of Stone” (delivered here with vocal assistance by Rufus Wainwright) or Faithfull dueling vocally with Nick Cave on a rather astonishing and spot on rendition of the Decemberists “The Crane Wife 3" (certainly not surpassing Colin Meloy’s original vocal, but easily equalling), or Ms. Faithfull, with an assist from Keith Richards (coming off like some queerly morbid Gram Pasrsons/Emmylou Harris reincarnation) plodding through a extraordinarily funereal version Merle Haggard’s “Sing Me Back Home”, Easy Come, Easy Go is in turns eclectic, weird, offbeat, brilliant, tuneful, daring, and flat out breathtaking.
And when Ms. Faithfull gets herself into places where few should dare to go; taking on Dolly Parton’s horrifying “Down From Dover”, and - gulp - making it better (!?): turning Smokey Robinson’s “Ooh Baby Baby” into an eight plus minute dream-state jazzercise collaboration with Antony Hegarty (of Antony and the Johnsons): turning Neko Case’s “Hold On, Hold On” into a rollicking raucous romp: simply delivering Randy Newman’s “In Germany Before the War” like and aged, tired Marlene Deitrich should have: redefining Eddie DeLange’s “Solitude”, a song that has been interpreted by renowned voices ranging from Billie Holiday to Etta James to Ella Fitzgerald, and holding her own - with ease; when Ms. Faithfull finds herself treading here where any sensible artist would fear to do so, she excels on Easy Come, Easy Go.
Willner’s smart, economic, classic arrangements certainly make Faithfull’s task a bit easier, but it’s Faithfull herself that takes the reins here and somehow manages not only to conquer these enormous challenges, she redefines them.
She takes ownership of them.
They become hers.

When popstars become half my age: on lust, longing, and mid-life crisis...

It almost felt like summer this morning...almost.
Coming out of the ass end of yet another of far too many Ohio winter’s, waking up to a morning whence the sun comes out from hiding to simply prove its existence and the thermometer finds the generosity to spit out a couple of digits the first of which is “5 followed by anything else is, sadly enough, a good day.
And it does feel like summer...sort of...

Pulling into work today, slugging down the last gulps of coffee from a half gallon styrofoam cup that scream “warning: content may be very hot” (it is not hot at all, it is in fact cold by now and I hate cold coffee...but I need every last drop of psychoactive stimulant I can get), I noticed a guy who I don’t really know but recognize as a fellow slug on the slug line. He’s older than me, probably mid to late 50's, maybe early sixties, and he’s crawling out of what can only be described as some type of mid-life crisis mobile. It’s a cute little thing (I suppose), a convertible sports car that stands about up to his knees as he gets out and is not much bigger than a decent size bathtub. The entire old dude, young car, mid-life crisis scene strikes me as funny and pathetic and I chuckle to myself as I toss the empty cup on top of the ever growing pile of empty cups and food wrappers that completely obliterate the passenger side floor of my car.
I cut the engine - Lily Allen, whose new album I have been listening to all the way to work, is still singing to me: “Now I know you feel betrayed / but its been weeks since I’ve been laid”.
I look down at the passenger seat at the CD jewel box, Lily-fucking-Allen’s It’s Not Me, It’s You stares back...mocking me.
I look out my windshield at Mr. Midlife Crisis then back to Lily and this time I don’t laugh. I hear Ms. Allen coo once again: “But it makes me really sad to hear you sound so desperate”.
I open the car door to shut her the fuck up.
She might as well be singing: “You’re laughing at him? You? Mr. Forty-two years old and listening to a British dance pop femme fatale half your age? Well, well, well, who in the hell is Mr. Mid-life Crisis guy now pal?” But she is a much smarter lyricist than that (and besides, just try and put those words to some type of electro-synth-pop dance beat).
Yet, it’s clearly implied.
I hang my head and plod into work.
Implications area motherfucker and life truly is a bitch.
Getting old in this rockroll life blows hard.
But Lily...ahh sweet, sassy, sexy Lily.
Ms. Allen.
Lily Allen makes this old, male rockroll heart beat again.
Midlife - crisis or no crisis - feel just fine right about now.

It’s Not Me, It’s You isn’t a perfect pop record, but boy’o’boy does it come damn close. Who would have ever thought that this daughter of a comedian (father Keith Allen is a solid journeyman comic/actor in Britain) and onetime Myspace posting popstarwannabe (yep ,she was one of those ) would make this much good this fast out of the potential and promise of her debut album, Alright, Still (basically a collection of her Myspace demos).
Right out of the gate Ms. Allen comes roaring. “Everyone’s At It”, a cheeky/serious ode about societal over-medication, crawls out from behind a windblown synth intro and lays into its heavy, fuzzy, gigantic downbeat groove. Allen singing in an exasperated breathy style - So you've got a prescription / And that makes it legal / I find the excuses overwhelmingly feeble / You go to the doctor / You need pills to sleep in / Well if you can convince him, then I guess that's not cheating - is more social critic than moralist. It’s an approach she rarely strays from.
The first single from It’s Not Me, It’s You, “The Fear”, is an obvious ode (antidote?) to Madonna Louise Ciccone’s classic and career defining “Material Girl”. In fact, it’s Madonna who is Ms. Allen’s closest compare. For all of her feminist-ish sass (“Not Fair” argues cheekily for equal orgasm rights) she still likes boys and wants boys to like her. She’s still a romantic at heart (“Who’d Have Known” - When you flash up on my phone / I no longer feel alone); a part-time egalitarian (“Fuck You”, opening with a Sesame Street piano Ms. Allen pontificates, somewhat simply: so you say it’s not okay to be gay/ well I think you’re just evil / you’re just some racist who can’t tie my laces / you’re point of view is medieval - leading to the, um, obvious chorus of “fuck you / fuck you very very much”); and an ambitious stylist (jazz/cabaret infects the closing “He Wasn’t There”).

Yet in the end it’s just lust that rules the day.
It’s Not Me, It’s You is a damn fine pop record to be sure, better written, produced, and more intelligent than most, but when it comes right down to the nitty gritty its about Ms. Allen, the femme fatale, flaunting her lovely talents, her come-hither coyness, the whole I love (to hate) boys and boys love (never hate) me-ness. She’s cast herself as a dream girl of sorts - the smart playful conversationalist type who can party all night with the boys - and it works. She is convincing. She is the girl who can give as much as she takes. It’s the role of a lifetime for her, but I am willing to bet it’s just that - a role. It’s Not Me, It’s You is that sort of record; it is a record that depends nearly as much on the persona Ms. Allen presents as it does the music itself. Either are too thin to exist alone. Both desperately need the other. They are inseparable elements in a rare chemistry that has - for better or worse - come to completely define pop music anymore. Persona trumps talent; to have talent revealed requires persona.
Ms. Allen is no doubt talented. Very much so. They question becomes where does her greater talent lay? In the creation of the character she plays in her music? Or in the music itself?
Sometimes its just to damn difficult to tell.
Sometimes, like when spinning It’s Not Me, It’s You on a brilliant sunny day, it doesn’t really matter.