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List Price: $16.98 | | Label: Decca
Salesrank: 11556
Released: March 17, 2009 |
| Our Price: $8.64 |
| Used Price: $6.58 |
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| Media: Audio CD |
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Easy Come, Easy Go Track Listing:
1. Down From Dover
2. Hold On Hold On
3. Solitude
4. Crane Wife
5. Easy Come Easy Go
6. Children Of Stone
7. Many Worlds
8. In Germany Before The War
9. Ooh Baby
10. The Phoenix
11. Dear God Please Help Me
12. Sing Me Back Home
Editorial Review:
Easy Come, Easy Go is the 22nd album from Marianne Faithfull and was recorded in December 2007 in NYC at the famous Sear Sound recording studio. Easy Come, Easy Go is the third album of Marianne s to be produced by Hal Willner (the others being Strange Weather and Blazing away). Marianne and Hal have been close friends since they've met, back in 1982, and have worked together on many many different projects over the years, (most recently on three songs from Marianne s acclaimed last album "Before the Poison") but Easy Come, Easy Go is their first complete studio album since Strange Weather, more than 20 years ago. Like that earlier album, Easy Come Easy Go is a collection of songs written by others and interpreted by Marianne. When Strange Weather was released in 1987, it was quickly hailed as one of Marianne s finest recordings, so this time around the challenge was really high: Marianne and Hal had to make an album that was at least as good. Both artists have risen to the challenge beautifully: they achieve a timeless recording, a masterpiece. All the songs have been chosen by Marianne and Hal, and range from Billie Holiday s "Solitude" to The Crane Wife"
by current band The Decemberists. Other tracks are "Sing Me Back Home" by Merle Haggard, "Children of Stone" by Espers, the title track " Easy Come, Easy Go Blues" by Bessie Smith, Morrissey s "Dear God Please Help Me", Dolly Parton s "Down from Dover " and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club s "Salvation". Easy Come, Easy Go also includes some interesting guest vocalists; Keith Richards appears on the aforementioned "Sing Me Back Home" Antony Hegarty on "Ooh Baby Baby" and Jarvis Cocker on Sondheim s "Somewhere". Other guest appearances on the album come from Rufus Wainwright who contributes vocals to the powerful "Children of stone ' while his aunt and mother Kate and Anna McGarrigle enchant on the "The Flandycke shore". Warren Ellis plays his magic violin on 3 songs, and Nick Cave lends some vocals to "The Crane Wife". Sean Lennon and Teddy Thompson play guitar on a couple of the tracks, and Cat Power harmonizes on "Hold On, Hold On". The album was recorded live ithe oldest recording studio in Manhattan the famous Sear Sound. The arrangements are by Cohen Bernstein and Weinberg Goldstein and were done specifically for Marianne. The String and Horn sections were led by L. Picket, and the band includes Marc Ribot, Greg Cohen, Rob Burger, Barry Reynolds and Jim White. Very few takes were needed in fact some of the songs were done in a single take (London sound engineers in the 60s use to call her Marianne one take Faithfull ). Infact there are very few overdubs on this recording.
Easy Come, Easy Go Reviews:
Marianne is TOPS 
2009-11-11 - not only open up your ears, but let the music seep through each and every pore of your body.
GOD: She's absolutely stunning.
Great voice, great music.
Keep 'm coming lady.
She's Still Got It
2009-11-05 - Marianne Faithfull continues to amaze and impress with her showmanship and grace. An astonishing album with beautiful vocals and an impressive group of musicians.
cd
2009-09-14 - Poor Marianne! She needs to retire and let
fans remember her glory from days past! Didn't
care for the cd and neither did my best friend
who is a super fan! Sorry!
Faithfull Fulfilled
2009-07-13 - For almost three decades, it has seemed safe to assume that Marianne Faithfull has, consciously or otherwise, been attempting to recreate the artistic and critical success she acheived with 1979's precedent-setting Broken English.
The less abrasive Dangerous Acquaintances (1981) almost succeeded artistically, and the Hal Wilner-produced collection of standards, Strange Weather, was wildly hailed by critics everywhere upon its release in 1987.
Since then, Faithfull, who began her career as a pop star in the 1960s, has often floundered creatively in her capacity as a recording artist.
Projects have been announced and then mysteriously scuttled (Sex At The Top and Blazing Away, which was originally planned as an album of newly-composed material); releases such as A Secret Life (1995) and Kiss'in Time (2002), like the earlier A Child's Adventure (1983), have been largely tepid and insubstantial; and her audience has been buried under a turgid barrage of unfocused, exploitive compilations which have endlessly recycled material from various stages of her remarkable career.
Faithfull has spoken publicly about her unhappiness with her recording history, and especially with what she sees as critical neglect.
One truth, rarely acknowledged anywhere, is that Faithfull's first period of fame in the 1960s bore some of her greatest contributions to Western culture. Today, and ever since their release, beautifully produced songs like 'Sally Free & Easy,' 'With You In Mind,' 'Young Girl Blues,' 'Sunny Goodge Street,' 'The Sha La La Song,' 'In The Night Time,' and 'Tomorrow's Calling' hold up amazingly well, completely and almost magically transporting the listener to a lost era.
However, Easy Come, Easy Go, a daring collection of covers once again produced by Hal Wilner, should bring Faithfull the kind of critical and artistic recognition she deserves---and on a grand scale. It is certainly the strongest and deftest album Faithfull has recorded since 1979.
Besides the immaculate instrumentation throughout, the most remarkable thing about the project is that Faithfull's rendition of many of the songs is superior to the originals.
Neko Case's abrasive 'Hold On, Hold On' is so blistering a cut that it might have been an outtake from Broken English. Espers's extended melancholy ode to addiction, 'Children of Stone,' is painted in somber goth tones, while the Decemberists's folkloric 'The Crane Wife 3' is a poignant elegy to a complex and conflicted relationship.
Duke Ellington's wistful 'Solitude' includes some of the album's nimblest phrasing, while Morrissey's 'Dear God Please Help Me,' one of the most powerful songs ever composed on the theme of sexual repression and release, is one of the crowning achievements of Faithfull's career.
Elsewhere, on Randy Newman's 'On Germany Before the War,' Faithfull revists the arch, twilit landscape of 'The Soldier's Wife' and 'The Boulevard of Broken Dreams,' while Dolly Parton's 'Down From Dover' and Merle Haggard's 'Sing Me Back Home' allow Faithfull, who attempted American roots music in the 1970s, another opportunity to prove herself a viable country singer.
Perhaps the most important aspect of Easy Come, Easy Go is that, though addressing themes of addiction, isolation, murder, the ending of pivotal relationships and even infant mortality, Faithfull never adopts the persona of the willful, self-destructive personality who, almost simultaneously, then begins to self-identify as a victim, as she often has since A Child's Adventure.
Easy Come, Easy Go skillfully presents listeners with a more mature, poised, disciplined, and wiser Faithfull than has yet been seen.
Paradoxically, those songs with a strong emotional content--'Hold On, Hold On,' 'Children of Stone,' 'The Crane Wife 3,' and 'Dear God Please Help Me'--are the most genuinely moving compostions Faithfull has ever recorded.
The packaging includes lovely photography of Faithful by Jean-Baptiste Mondino, who also created the striking cover for 2005's 'Before the Poison.' Though the cover art may seem incidental, it is important in this case, as for 15 years, Faithfull has released album after album containing images of herself which are either purposefully blurred, or ostensibly designed, for some unfathomable reason, to make her appear as unattractive as possible.
Featuring longtime collaborator Barry Renolds in addition to Marc Ribot, the project is also informed by the talents of Cat Power, Nick Cave, Keith Richards, Rufus Wainwright, and Kate and Anna McGarrigle.
While not all the song choices and arrangements may be equally palitable to all tastes, the least that can be said about Easy Come, Easy Go is that it will be the world's loss if Faithfull, Wilner, and friends don't schedule time in the studio together again shortly.
This project should be the beginning, not the end, of a powerful and influential new period in Faithfull's career.
Not impressed 
2009-07-09 - Marianne Faithfull returns with her 22nd release, `Easy Come, Easy Go' produced by collaborator Hal Willner and featuring a who's who of guest appearances from friends Nick Cave, Chan Marshall, Anthony Hegarty, Sean Lennon, Keith Richards, Teddy Thompson and Rufus Wainwright. The iconic singer performs 12 songs from various artists and gives them the Faithfull makeover.
The song selection and performance ranges from the sublime, "Solitude" by Duke Ellington to the spooked reading of "Hold On Hold On" written by Neko Case. Nick Cave lends his vocals to duet with Faithfull on The Decemberists "The Crane Wife #3." Marianne Faithfull is not always an easy listen, as her vocals might be hard to take for some. Consider her an acquired taste, similar to one of her collaborators, Antony Hegarty who performs with her on Smokey Robinson's "Ooh Baby Baby." `Easy Come, Easy Go' veers from cabaret to nightclub styles of arrangements with ease and class as most of these songs were recorded in one take. That's almost unheard of in today's music scene. `Easy Come, Easy Go' offers listeners another side of Faithfull allowing them to get a musical roadmap of where she's been and where she's going.
