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Dreaming My Dreams
by Marianne Faithfull (1979)
Albums category pick for the week of 7/14/08
Marianne Faithfull fascinates me though I have never dug deep into her varied and hip musical career until now. I found Dreaming My Dreams on itunes and was intrigued by her open, pretty and soft focus face staring back at me and was double ultra intrigued that it was a country album. I was set to love it, and I do.. now. It admittedly takes some getting used to.
Her strained, long time smoker muppet voice mixes kind of unexpectedly with the eighties production sheen. The raw and polish, once you’ve spent some time with it, begin to sound perfectly, weirdly mixed. And though she lacks the accent, her voice is made for honky tonk reminiscing and lamenting.
She is covering lots of great standards both country and rock country, a lot of which are not super familiar, which makes this an extra special discovery because you first discover her version then begin to seek out the originals from Waylon Jennings, Crystal Gayle, and Kitty Wells.
When she gets upbeat, it doesn’t work as well for me, like Sweet Little Sixteen – just a bit too off kilter, with a karaoke feeling. But her best songs are grand and there are a bunch: Honky Tonk Angels, Somebody Loves You, I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight, Dreaming My Dreams, and Wait for me Down by the River.
This was a departure for Faithfull and it’s success encouraged her to keep on going with her career, eventually releasing her most praised work Broken English. It’s an interesting in between album. After she was a doe eyed teen pop star who traded kisses (and dirtier things) with Mick Jagger but before she became the formidable, husky voiced woman that all hip girls aspire to become.
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