new introductory bit here.

This is a reviews page based on my own collection, which just keeps growing despite itself. If it isn't listed here, it's because I don't own it yet, or I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Also, bother your local "new rock" radio station and make sure they are playing "new rock" and not "Rock the Casbah," which is not new.

note: entries in red text indicate my pick for the artist's best available album. A gold numeral indicates the POPocalypse winner of the year's best album; second- and third-place winners are in blue. Green lettering indicates an obviously exploitative record company compilation without apparent artist input.

Wow. What a life Marianne Faithfull has led. Addicted for years to controlled substances, rich and later homeless, Mick Jagger's former lover, the subject of constant scandal, present among the backup singers of "All You Need is Love," she recorded six albums in the 1960s and began her chart career with three straight UK top 10 hits, but retired from music in 1967 and spiralled into chemical dependency hell, re-emerging from 1975-1978 for a pair of critically derided albums that flopped in England and were never released in America.

Signed to Island, who were thought mad to pay an advance to a heroin addict with Marianne's reputation, she hooked up with guitarist and writer Barry Reynolds, with whom she would collaborate often, for the critical smash Broken English. The musical performances on this 1979 release are very dated, with an anonymous, New York/new wave synthesiser feel. The lyrics and vocals, however, are outstanding, as evidenced on her minor hit "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan." Her cover of "Working Class Hero" is respectable, and if you think Alanis's "You Oughtta Know" is original and shocking, then, heh, you just haven't heard the truly eye-opening "Why'd Ya Do It" yet. Her voice wrecked into a harsh growl by whiskey and cigarettes, Marianne took the role of a survivor and clung to it, with surprisingly adult results.

Dangerous Acquaintances followed in 1981 and was something of a letdown after the eye-opening English. 1983's A Child's Adventure, however, proved it wasn't a one-off. "Times Square," the lead track on this one, is my song. Four and a half minutes of ecstacy and madness, concerning everything from alcohol to violence to Christ, this song moves me to action and might have saved my life a few times a few times in early 2000. There are several other good songs, a horrible sleeve, and a more timeless style.

There was a four-year layoff as she revamped her style away from American new wave and gave the first evidence of her passion for 1930s European music. Working with Hal Willner and Bill Frissell, she completed her final UK top 100 album for more than a decade, Strange Weather. Slow-paced to the point of inertia, this 1987 covers collection only really moves a couple of times. "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" and "Yesterdays" are quite nice, and the remake of her '60s signature tune "As Tears Go By" is outstanding. With Reynolds rejoining her, Marianne began recording a new, slow-paced rock album in 1988, but the sessions were abandoned despite the very high quality of the material that later surfaced on the Perfect Stranger compilation.

A brief tour in 1989 included a show at St. Anne's Cathedral in Brooklyn, recorded for the live Blazing Away. Punctuated by a single studio number, the fabulous title track (from the 1988 sessions), the album offers mostly extended performances. The expected numbers ("Sister Morphine," "Lucy Jordan," "As Tears Go By" and so forth) are played with competent energy by a sharp band including Reynolds and Marc Ribot. Afterwards, she kept a reasonably low profile for five years. While not retiring again, she limited her activity to soundtrack and tribute albums, and the occasional concert appearance. Happily then, when she did reemerge, it was with her best work yer. A Secret Life is a passionate, mature, dangerous album. Marianne knows that love can hurt like hell and, assisted by Angelo Badalamenti, proceeds to articulate it perfectly on such gems as "Flaming September" and "Bored By Dreams." The single "Love in the Afternoon" depicts an affair more vividly than any song I can think of. This is simply a masterpiece, but a worldwide chart disappointment.

Faithfull left Island after 15 years when she decided to stretch pop to an even further breaking point with the 1996 live collection 20th Century Blues. Accompanied solely by Paul Trueblood on piano, she performs 13 Weimar Republic-era tracks from composers like Kurt Weill, Bertholt Brecht and Noel Coward; some are familiar numbers like "Alabama Song," "Mack the Knife" and "Falling in Love Again," but several will be very new to modern audiences. Just to be contradictory, she also adds a heart-shattering rendition of Harry Nilsson's "Don't Forget Me." This is remarkable and should broaden your musical horizons quite effectively. In a similar vein is her 1998 collaborative effort The Seven Deadly Sins. Challenging, weird and out of print in under two years, this features highlights of a pair of concerts with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, first a 1997 take on Brecht's controversial opera, followed by five other Weill/Brecht songs from 1998.

While finding press about her remains difficult (due in no small part to her poor chart placings), occasionally her name shows up again, and in 2000, several media outlets noted her first new traditional rock album in five years, Vagabond Ways, released by indie Instinct Records. The album is another collaboration with Reynolds, along with Daniel Lanois and Glen Patscha among others, and features a mix of originals and covers from the likes of Pink Floyd ("Incarceration of a Flower Child") and Leonard Cohen ("Tower of Song"). The album was another chart flop, but the reviews were justifiably nice.

MARIANNE FAITHFULL: A Perfect Stranger: The Island Anthology
Credit where it's due: Island did a fantastic job compiling this 35-song 1998 collection, which spans her six albums for the label from 1979-95. Two of the tracks, a remix and a B-side, are new to CD, and four are previously unreleased, from 1990 sessions. The essay is detailed and extensive, and there are lots of photographs. A better introduction simply isn't available, and won't be.