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Album Details

• Artist: Marianne Faithfull
• Album: Before The Poison
• Label: Anti
• Year of Release: 2004
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: patchen on 2005-04-21

I finally have to admit to myself that yes, it does matter that the Jefferson Airplane's "Volunteers" was used in an ad to sell stocks. We do pay a price for letting everything sooner or later become product. I hate to pick on James Earl Jones too, but it is really that easy? Here's a guy who for about 30 years or more managed to keep a reputation as a mature actor, whose dignified presence could be felt in every movie he did. So Verizon throws him a pile to hawk cell phone minutes, and he's break dancing, dressing up like a cowpoke and generally revealing that he's choked the corporate member all the way down to its engorged root. If nothing means anything aside from they way we use it this second, then where does wisdom come from? Or trust? It does matter that we have a guy who is running for saint during the day, and cranking out the most cynical, audience-slapping disco shit, to the point of releasing his new single as an iPod commercial before we even got to hear it in the context of a new song. This after an early songs about faith, commitment. It is not often that the reverse happens, when someone who first showed up on the radar as a mindless pop confection becomes, through hard won, real experience, a wise, brave and daring artist. Marianne Faithfull, thankfully, gives us an example of that wisdom.

Her latest, Before The Poison (Anti), is staggering in its honesty and hard-earned experience; you believe that she is singing with moments of her own life in mind, not memories of what it was once like to take responsibility for her actions. That Nick Cave and P.J. Harvey are the prime movers, lyrically, behind the record, adds another dimension to its bravery.

Each wrote several songs: Cave, the majestic and chilling "The Mystery of Love" and "There is a Ghost", plus the odd disco of "Desperanto"; Harvey's offerings include the powerful "My Friends Have", and "No Child of Mine", which she recorded on her own Uh-Uh Her, and which sounds here like a brooding Exile on Main Street outtake. Faithfull also covers Blur's "Last Song" and wrings ever bit of power there for the taking out of it. On "song" and the title track she stands up before any of her memories and mistakes, and tells them to fuck off. It is ironic that the final cut, City of Quartz", almost sounds like one of those pointless, fluffy pop ballads with which she first made herself and her face known. Yet this time, the singer is not a naive model, soon to be a junkie, groupie, and, for years, forgotten. Marianne Faithfull remembers. Verizon, Ipod or Schwabb are not calling; she's not listening.

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