Marianne Faithfull - Blazing Away

A better than average live album

Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R8ZZHVP07QB7L My name is Jeremy Gloff. I am a musician (check me out on Amazon!) and retro music enthusiast. If you enjoyed this review make sure to check out my Amazon user profile to check out my other reviews. I am always up for making new friends and discussing the music I love!!! July 8, 2008

Atmospheric torch and twang

On this 1990 album Marianne Faithfull tells the story of her life up to that moment in time through a series of songs that is more or less autobiographical, in front of an appreciative audience. Most tracks are long and expansive; the first ones being especially slow and mournful. This gives the musicians the opportunity to demonstrate their instrumental prowess, particularly on a track like Guilt.

A melancholy French ballad with a medieval feel opens the album, representing one of three styles found on Blazing Away: the haunting ballad full of gravitas, like the bluesy Strange Weather from the album of the same name, Sister Morphine, As Tears Go By and the traditional folk song She Moves Through the Fair.

The other styles are up-tempo rock, like Working Class Hero, Why'd Ya Do It with its beautiful accordion keyboards, this hard rocking version of Broken English, and country, represented by the terrific torch and twang of Lucy Jordan and the only studio track Blazing Away that has a thematic connection to Times Square of which this live version is magnificent; devoted fans of Faithfull ought to experience it.

This rendition is much more powerful, unhinged and stirring than the original on A Child's Adventure. That is a definite plus of this live album: the versions are sufficiently different to put the songs, like also Broken English, in a new light. For example, the notorious Why'd Ya Do It is less acerbic, done with a wink and a smile.

Blazing Away is a most atmospheric album showing Marianne at her peak in the early 90s. It includes sleeve notes where the artist explains the meaning of the songs in the context of her life. The best compilation of her later work as a rock/torch singer is Perfect Stranger: The Island Anthology whilst her earlier work as a folk/pop singer is captured on The Very Best of and Greatest Hits.

Faithfull: An Autobiography

February 1, 2008

Blown Away by Blazing Away

Marianne Faithfull has had a remarkably long singing career; the British songster started out in the 1960's as the pretty girlfriend of Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones, and in 1964 delivered a pretty, tinkling version of "As Tears Go By," a song written for her by Jagger and Keith Richards, also of The Stones. She's still singing today, but you'd never call her work "pretty" anymore; she's all grown up now, and her songs are rougher, tougher, and punkier: even "As Tears Go By," (it's worth getting her first "Greatest Hits" just to hear how she sounded then.) And she acts, too.


Faithfull, daughter of an Austrian mother of the lesser nobility, has been around, and has had her problems with drink and drugs (if she's a favorite of yours, as of mine, you might want to look up her autobiography). But she's going stronger than ever now, specializing in art rock, although people tell me she lacks, or at any rate lacked, the breath control of a trained singer: this might have a negative impact on the further length of her career.

But she's been doing very strong work for quite a while now. Her albums "Strange Weather" and "Broken English" were great critical favorites. She gives several strongly supported concerts in New York every year. In the interests of full disclosure, I've gone to quite a few myself: her voice is like nobody else's, and her backing group has an edgy punk sound you don't find every day. So, I've been to her show of Kurt Weill works at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (another record worth getting.) And I was there, at Saint Anne's Church, Brooklyn Heights, when she and her band recorded "Blazing Away." Truthfully, I was just blown away.

"Sister Morphine," another song by Jagger, Richards -- and Faithfull-- is one of the most beautiful I've ever heard. "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan," by Shel Silverstein, blows a lot of people away. She's got "Strange Weather," "Guilt," John Lennon's "Working Class Hero," "Broken English," which she had a hand in writing herself; and the famously obscene "Why'd Ya Do It?" on here. She's also got an all-grown up "As Tears Go By" that sure doesn't tinkle anymore.

Faithfull is one of the finest art rock singers now working, but you'd better appreciate art rock to appreciate her. And a further warning to the sensitive; she uses some language you may never have heard a woman using before, let alone on record.

May 7, 2007

J'Adore

In 1990, as a naive young music fan, I read a rave review of a live album by the intriguingly-named Marianne Faithfull. Curiosity piqued, I picked up "Blazing Away" at my local record shop. What followed was intense - an hour of dark, moody music, sometime wistful, sometimes vicious, sung in a husky alto that seemed to define the term "chanteuse" to a college freshman with only the vaguest notion of what that meant. I became an immediate fan, and though I discovered her studio albums were fantastic, nothing matches the raw emotion poured forth in the suitably sombre, acoustics of St. Anne's Cathederal. The album wanders a bit in the second half, and though others on this site have raved about "Times Square," I feel the studio version is vastly superior. However, the incredible live renditions of "Guilt," "As Tears Go By," "The Ballad of Lucy Jordan," and "Broken English" are without equal. It's also a pleasure to hear her versions of John Lennon's "Working Class Hero" and Tom Waits' "Strange Weather." However, my personal favorite track is the harrowing "Sister Morphine," which benefits from a masterful arrangement. And how delicious, after the blisteringly obscene rant "Why'd Ya Do It?," to hear dear Marianne sigh, "Ah, I feel better now." Ten years on, still a delightful album, best enjoyed in the dark. July 12, 2000

Marianne is ever Faithfull

Recorded live in front of her adoring fans at St. Anne's Church in Brooklyn, NY, "Blazing Away" ranks as Marianne Faithfull's truest testament to who and what she is: a one-time media darling, presently a woman expressing her own feelings on her own terms.

The album opens with the dark, haunting "Les Prisons du Roi." She follows it up with a slow, dark, and absorbing reading of "Strange Weather." The album progresses through dark, slow ballads ("As Tears Go By") to angry rock ("Why'd Ya Do It?"). She does a splendid version of Lennon's "Working Class Hero." The standout is the desolate tale of woe "Times Square." It will absolutely give you chills. Following these excellent tracks is an a cappella reading of "She Moved Through the Fair." And after that, the apocalypse: a pounding, driving "Broken English," the title track of her 1979 watershed.

Through all of the changes in music and in the rock scene in general, Marianne Faithfull remains a force to be reckoned with. Her songwriting, her singing, and her lack of desire to "sell out" for the mainstream stardom she so richly deserves ensure that her voice and name will echo for generations to come. February 22, 2000

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