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Song Title Time Price Visit our audio page for more information Faithfull's career spans over four decades, beginning with the melancholy of the Jagger/Richards' tune, "As Tears Go By", the first of four hit singles Marianne recorded during the 60's. In 1979, she released the stunning reinvention "Broken English", the album by which her mature career has been measured. "Before The Poison" is another such record, as Faithfull teams with her most sympathetic collaborators yet, including PJ Harvey, Nick Cave, Blur's Damon Albarn, and Magnolia composer Jon Brion. Since the release of Marianne Faithfull's blistering Broken English (1979), Faithfull's audience has been impatiently waiting for the vocalist to fully fulfill that album's artistic promise. Though Dangerous Acquaintances (1981) was a solid if less brazen follow up, 1983's A Child's Adventure centered on defeat and exhausted victimization; several tracks wallowed in the very kind of material that Broken English had been such a volcanic reaction against. Since that time, and despite the guidance of Hal Wilner, Angelo Badalamenti, and other notable impresarios, Faithfull has slogged through a series of largely fragmented, poorly focused, and occasionally embarrassing albums, each of which has contained several riveting tracks buried among some very tepid material indeed. Thus, Faithfull's releases over the last 20 years have become increasingly difficult to become enthusiastic about, as each disappointing album has felt unavoidably like the last of her career. A handful of young musicians and producers created 2002's Kissin Time, a woefully misguided, grossly overproduced attempt at creating a marketable modern pop album; but pop albums are best structured around performers well under 50, and Faithfull sounded like a superfluous guest vocalist on her own album. Nor was Kissin Time bolstered by the fact that the musicians involved, with the exception of stalwart Dave Stewart, represented musical trends that were quickly becoming dated by the beginning of the new millennium. Though Faithfull is clearly a talented vocalist, songwriter, and performer, her "world - weary" stranger-, outsider-, and sin - eater persona has long outworn its welcome, and thus what little real verve her albums display appear to be reflections not of her own talent, but of whatever group of handlers she has currently fallen in with. The ratio of worthwhile to poor material on Before The Poison is about the same as on Faithfull's past several releases. The good news is that Faithfull's two piano - based collaborations with Nick Cave, "Crazy Love" and "There Is A Ghost," both of which are co - produced by Hal Wilner, belong among her finest recordings in the last 20 years, and would have fit comfortably on Strange Weather (1987), Faithfull's best, but far from perfect, post - Broken English collection. "Last Song," a lovely collaboration between Faithfull and Damon Albarn, is reminiscent of her melodic Sixties work and contains some of the album's finest vocal phrasing. Polly Jean Harvey has produced, written, and contributed to five of the tracks, but only the first, "The Mystery Of Love," really amounts to something substantial. While it's easy to understand why Faithfull would pursue as lean a production as possible after Kissin Time, Harvey's sketchy tracks are so raw that each sounds like a first - rehearsal demo. "Before The Poison" finds Faithfull straining to make herself heard over jangling chorus guitars, "No Child Of Mine," at 6:15 minutes, is simply too long and too slow to sustain itself, while the upbeat "My Friends Have," while less than a Faithfull classic, at least allows the singer to explore a new theme and mood. "In The Factory," the fifth Harvey track, is a flat abstraction, 3:51 minutes of aural fog and limbo. The musically dynamic "Desperanto," which is instrumentally reminiscent of Blondie's No Exit (1999) or The Curse Of Blondie (2004), is further proof that rapping isn't one of her strengths, while "City of Quartz" is the kind of marring indulgence Faithfull seems unable to resist on album after album. Another positive aspect of Before The Poison are the album graphics, which include clear, clean and lovely photographs of Faithfull; on previous releases, images of Faithfull have been grotesquely smudged, obscured, or otherwise presented in the least flattering manner possible.

Before the Poison Available from Amazon Price: $17.98 Updated on 11-22-2008.