Horses & High Heels

Horses & High Heels

'I don't really do conventional...' Recorded in New Orleans with a core of exceptional local musicians, the album features eight cover versions and four original new songs co-written by Marianne, four songs which feature the virtuoso guitar playing of John Porter, a musician/producer friend most noted for his work with Roxy Music, Eric Clapton and The Smiths. The album also includes one song with lyrics specially written for her by Irish playwright Frank McGuiness (the evocative 'The Old House'), two cameo appearances on guitar from another old friend, Lou Reed, plus further cameos from Dr. John and MC5's Wayne Kramer. It's all exquisitely produced by long-term collaborator Hal Willner, the soundscape alchemist behind the critically-lauded 'Easy Come, Easy Go' (2009), her astonishing collection of covers and duets featuring more of the kind of people Marianne calls friends, from Keith Richards and Jarvis Cocker to Rufus Wainwright and Nick Cave. There's the brooding, spectral guitar-rock of Greg Dulli & Mark Lanegan's 'The Stations', the swooning, country-rock tinge of R.B Morris' 'That's How Every Empire Falls' and the bar-room blues and 70s soul revue thrills of Jackie Lomax's 'No Reason'. 'We chose some soul material this time which I was very unsure of at first,' muses Marianne. 'No Reason', 'Back In Baby's Arms', 'Gee Baby', these songs are more vocally demanding and it was quite frightening. But I think we managed it.' Elsewhere are glimmering 70s soul classics, from the gorgeous, steel-guitar-layered 'Love Song' (originally written by 70s song-writer Lesley Duncan and made famous by Elton John), the bewitching piano reverie of Carol King's 'Goin' Back' (definitively recorded in '66 by Dusty Springfield) and her positively Shakespearian rendition of the Shangri-Las masterpiece, 'Past Present and Future'. Her four original new songs are a revelation: the folky and unfeasibly rousing 'Why Did We Have To Part?', an elegy to the end of a long relationship 'I just couldn't resist a break-up song - and the pain is over', to the rollicking, Hammond swirl of 'Prussian Blue' (a paean to her life in Paris), the rhythmically compelling, Celtic-folk-tinged 'Horses And High Heels' and the joyous 'Eternity' featuring a sampled Arabian-jazz flourish from Brian Jones' recording in Morocco with the Master Musicians of Jajouka (1968's 'Brian Jones Presents: The Pipes of Pan at Jajouka'). 'It's all a very different style for me,' notes Marianne, 'much more rhythmic. And a very modern record, it's not looking back to the past at all. All the songs are about now, you know?' Marianne is, they say, the Godmother of Goth, both doomed romantic and ultimate bohemian survivor. A teenage pop star, rock star's girlfriend and iconic beauty in the 1960s.