Jan. 13, 2010 - Issue #743: Broken Embraces

Marianne Faithfull

Marianne Faithfull
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, Marianne Faithfull

Marianne Faithfull
Dreamin' My Dreams
(Nems)
Originally released: 1976

The English folksinger whose first chart success had come in 1964 with the Mick Jagger-Keith Richards penned "As Tears Go By" hardly seemed the sort to cast herself in the midst of an album of country tunes. Neither did the swinging-'60s songstress who left her first husband to hook up with Jagger, only to become more famous for being cloaked only in a fur rug during a drug bust at Richards' house than anything she'd done musically to that point.

But fast forward a few more years—past the tightening grip of a heavy drug addiction and some more-than-hard living—and a singer emerges who was no longer suited to the wispy folk of her seemingly long gone youth. Harsh circumstances over a decade had been tough on Faithfull and the delicate nuances began fading from her voice, descriptions like "whisky-soaked" and "gravelly" becoming routine when discussions turned to Faithfull—a practice that continues to this day.

In 1976, though, that voice was something yet to become familiar, and the shift was jarring. Yet, the new rasp that had found its way into Faithfull's tones was well-suited for Dreamin' My Dreams, her only foray into country music.

Though she has only one songwriting credit on the album Faithfull's interpretations of Dreamin' My Dreams' 12 songs give the record a focus that serves it well. Lyrically, the singer sounds very much at home in the record's landscape full of hearts that are not so much shattered as they are cracked, fractures spider-legging their way ever farther out. The album is veiled in a sense of uncertainty, with a feeling that Faithfull is singing from a place where the calm belies a coming storm, teetering upon an edge with little indication as to which way she might fall.

Faithfull reveals her approach in the title track that opens the album, where she offers in her worn voice, "Some day I'll get over you / I'll live to see it all through / But I'll always miss / Dreamin' my dreams with you," only to follow that chorus with the almost matter-of-fact statement of independence, "But I won't let it change me, not if I can / I'd rather believe in love / I'll give it away as much as I can / To those that I'm fondest of."

It's the never-say-die refusal to quit that Faithfull assumes here that shapes Dreamin' My Dreams into an album that shows its scars unapologetically at the same time as it shakes a fist in defiance. In Faithfull's hands, hurt is not something to be ashamed of, but rather it's an obstacle to be dealt with along the paths of life.

To be sure, Faithfull casts a strong character on the album, but she's by no means a winner here, often as a result of her own doing, singing at one point, "Here I go down that wrong road again / Going back where I've already been / Even though I know where it will end / Here I go down that wrong road again."

The soulful, string-laden country strumming that backs Faithfull's voice throughout offers support, though; the steel of the band props her up during her weakest moments—an admission of her own mistakes on "All I Wanna Do In Life" or a tinge of a mean streak on "Fairytale Hero." Through it all, the band carries her along with gentle ebbs and flows, working in counterpoint to the heartbreak of Faithfull's words.
The late-'70s music scene would soon push the singer in a new direction on 1979's Broken English, leaving Dreamin' My Dreams as a lonely beacon in Faithfull's catalogue. V

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