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Toronto Sun - Sunday, March 23, 1997
20th Century Blues
by Jane Stevenson
Marianne Faithfull
20th Century Blues (RCA Victor)
If Faithfull's latest album
,
recorded live with pianist Paul Trueblood
at a Parisian nightclub, doesn't take you back to the smoky-filled cabarets
of Germany's Weimar Republic then nothing will.
"Welcome to The New Morning," Faithfull tells her seemingly captive audience after belting out a spirited rendition of her first number, Kurt Weill's Alabama Song. You know the one covered by The Doors that begins: "Oh show me the way to that next whiskey bar, Oh, don't ask why, Oh, don't ask why."
Weill's songs figure most prominently on this album, which also includes works by Bertolt Brecht, Noel Coward and Harry Nilsson.
Faithfull, who just performed at the Phoenix last Wednesday, got the idea of doing 20th Century Blues after contributing The Ballad Of The Soldier's Wife to the Weill 1995 tribute album Lost In The Stars.
She certainly seems to be channeling the ghost of Marlene Dietrich as her deep voice resonates on Friedrich Hollander's Falling In Love Again but hers is a rawer delivery overall.
It's most obvious on her rousing version of Mack The Knife and in her strange observations. "There is a woman who during the war was a nurse, now she's a prostitute. I must admit I've always thought there was a connection between those two, they both take care of you," Faithfull inexplicably says leading into Mon Ami, My Friend.
Also available, VHS
or DVD of Marianne Faithfull's performance at the 1997 Montreal Jazz Festival.
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