aaamusic | On 06, Mar 2011

Marianne Faithfull comes back after three years and a very good album,  Easy come easy go, and she appears peaceful and with a great will to live.

The new album was realized after a tormented period of her life, if forty years ago her main problem was drug, now she struggles against depression and failed marriages. Horses and High Heels contain in the title itself the mood of an album made by a rock madam who has never given herself up. Horses represents the idea of freedom and high heels are symbols for her status of music goddess, of a beauty that will live forever despite her age.

The thirteen tracks are not only covers, but little paintings, also she wrote four autobiographic songs in which she told about her life in last years.

The album starts with a cover of The Stations by Dulli/Lanegan (The Gutter Twins), it’s a very dark beginning, but its desperate atmosphere is only the prelude to other bright tunes.

Mrs Faithfull’s vocals are deep and heavy, but they can be both mellow, like in the autobiographic Prussian Love, built on a Hammond tapestry, and touching, as in Love Song, one the jewels of this album, or in Goin’ Back, a precious reinterpretation of a masterpiece originally performed by Carol King.

Gee baby, and the final duo Eternity and Back in baby’s arms shows the brilliant side of Mrs Faithfull, she wants to play with soul and explore new ways to sing and make music.

She never save herself and invite Dr. John, Lou Reed and Wayne Kramer to join the party, enriching her album with their amazing guitars.

The final track, The Old house, written by Frank Mc Guinness, closes the album with a melancholic atmosphere, with the sensation of a past that seems to surface, not to be regretted but to show the right way for the future and Marianne Faithfull seems that she has eventually found her way.

Author: Roberta Capuano