Dreamin My Dreams

The young, innocent Marianne Faithfull who debuted in the ‘60s with the sullen yet sweet cover of the Mick Jagger-Keith Richards penned “As Tears Go By” was a weathered, struggling drug addict by the mid-‘70s and had the voice to prove it. These country and folk tunes reflect her experience. The title track, Bob Dylan’s “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” and “All I Wanna Do In Life” emphasize Faithfull’s inner optimism, her desire to find a place of calm amidst the storm, while the intensely personal “Lady Madelaine” memorializes a dear friend whose trials with drugs led to an unfortunate end. Elsewhere, Faithfull takes a well-earned stab at country music where a standard such as “Honky Tonk Angels” and her own original “That Was the Day (Nashville)” tilt towards the Nashville country sound without losing Faithfull’s own peculiar and alluring approach. She locates the emotional core of “I’m Not Lisa.” and sounds particularly lurid for her cover of Chuck Berry’s “Sweet Little Sixteen.” Faithfull would soon explode with the punk-new wave inspired *Broken English*, so this serves as the quiet before the storm.