Marianne Faithfull's Burning Moonlight is a spookily beautiful gift from beyond the grave
The voice is smoky and blue, full of ancient wisdom married with devil-may-care insouciance. 'It's just the sort of mood I'm in,' sings Marianne Faithfull. 'Burning moonlight, like fire, like food.'
It is wonderful to hear the late, great troubadour sing to us again, just a few weeks since we lost her, in a spookily beautiful gift from beyond the grave. Burning Moonlight, released today, is from an EP of recordings Faithfull made in her last year, before her death on January 30, age 78. We know that she was suffering from emphysema and long Covid-19, and had told me in an interview in 2021 that she was barely able to sing any more. The fact that she summoned up the strength to carry on making music says a lot about what a formidable character she was.
Co-written by Faithfull (and two other writers) Burning Moonlight finds her pondering the creative need to live life on the edge. 'Burning moonlight to survive, walking in fire is my life.' There are hints of loneliness, sorrow and regret, as she tells us 'It seems I nearly had a plan' and 'wherever I go I'm alone', but there is a counterbalancing sense of resilience in the mysterious notion that 'burning moonlight' is the very purpose of her existence.
The stark musical setting (produced by long-time collaborator Head, aka Howard Bullivant) harks back to the folk pop of her debut single, the Jagger and Richards composition As Tears Go By, from 1965. But there are six decades of life experience between that debut, and this swan song, and you can hear it in every note.
An EP of four new songs will be released by Decca as limited-edition vinyl for Record Store Day on April 12, and will be made available worldwide as a digital EP on June 6. It includes two originals, Burning Moonlight and Love Is (the latter written by her grandson, Oscar Dunbar) and two folk songs, Three Kinsmen Bold (which she learnt from her father, Glynn Faithfull) and a new interpretation of She Moved Thru the Fair.
There is often a sense that singing is a young person's game, particularly in the pop realm. Old voices grow weaker, more cracked. But Faithfull's singing is a reminder that the voice is a vehicle for our humanity, and when the singer has the ability to put themselves fully into the song, age can bring a majesty inaccessible to the young. Faithfull only really started sounding great when she lost the sweetness of her youthful tone and has rarely sounded better than on this utterly gorgeous end-of-life recording.
For more on Marianne Faithfull, listen to the Telegraph's Mick Brown interview the musician over 'champagne and a spliff' in 1994, and 'talk about the worst of times' on the Daily T podcast.
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