Kissin Time [Import]

Marianne Faithfull | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 12, 2002)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: EMI Import
• ASIN: B00005V90Q
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #566,095 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Sex With Strangers

2. The Pleasure Song

3. Like Being Born

4. I'm on Fire

5. Wherever I Go

6. Song for Nico

7. Sliding Through Life on Charm

8. Love and Money

9. Nobody's Fault

10. Kissin' Time

11. Something Good

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Marianne Faithfull is still more famous in some circles for whom she slept with in the 1960s than for her talents as singer and lyricist. Kissin' Time centers on that unjust state of affairs and consequently smells not of roses, but stale perfume, spilt gin, and sex. The result is one of her best albums. Comprised of collaborations with the likes of Beck, Blur, Pulp, Billy Corgan, and Dave Stewart, Kissin' Time serves up everything from spiky electro-pop (Beck's superb "Sex with Strangers") to Tom Waits-lite (Blur's rather self-conscious title track). "Song for Nico" is a no-punches-pulled ballad to the Velvet Underground chanteuse, while the magnificent "Sliding Through Life on Charm" finds Pulp providing the perfect backdrop for a hilariously filthy autobiographical screed. Faithfull's cracked growl and painfully personal lyrics are an acquired taste. But if you can deal with sexual and emotional honesty, as well as deliberately eclectic tunes and textures, you'll be treated to bold, bitter, and elegantly profane pop art. --Garry Mulholland

Product Description

Kissin' Time by Marianne Faithfull

This product is manufactured on demand using CD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Marianne's not ready to kiss her talent goodbye just yet, August 24, 2002

By 

30-year old wallflower "Eric N Andrews" (West Lafayette, IN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kissin' Time (Audio CD)

With 1999's VAGABOND WAYS (not relased in America until 2000), Marianne Faithfull proved that, for a woman in her 50s, she could still command the same power & attention that albums like 1979's seminal BROKEN ENGLISH proved. Granted, Marianne is not the easiest artist to listen to, let alone love. Her critical look back at her past musical career & decadence is brutally honest & not often pretty. But before giving her a thumbs-down, one needs to realize how she got where she is today & when one does, they'll find Marianne to be a little more approachable & even human. What's especially amazing is that she still has a considerable amount of fans after all this time, including her fellow artists. Her newest album KISSIN' TIME is a concentration on duets & collaborations where both Marianne & the guest are on equal footing, causing both to play off each other's strengths.

It was albums like BROKEN ENGLISH that helped establish Marianne as more than just Mick Jagger's ex-girlfriend & some would also argue that she has held up better than her former lover. The big question about KISSIN' TIME would be could an old pro like Marianne work well with the younger admirers? The answer turns out to be a resounding yes!

Since 1999's MIDNITE VULTURES, Beck has been a little on the quiet side, the normally prolific Mr. Hansen taking his time with his next artistic move. But apparently, he had time to work with Marianne & gave her some of his best material, too. Songs like "Sex With Strangers" & "Like Being Born" (which may be more sinister than it sounds) are both typical of Marianne's pull-no-punches look at her past history & Beck's new-Dylan-ish stream-of-consciousness writing style. Just as it seemed only Beck could perform his own material, the writing team of Faithfull & Hansen works out well & hopefully will create more in the future. Marianne even goes straight to the source by covering Beck's "Nobody's Fault But My Own" (as "Nobody's Fault"). Certainly one of the more understandable songs Beck has ever created (not by much, though), Marianne works wonders with this one as well.

The other big collaborator on KISSIN' TIME is former Smashing Pumpkins' frontman Billy Corgan, who not only gives Marianne some of his best material, but also his most direct. "I'm On Fire" & "Wherever I Go" are surprisingly romantic & even seductive for the usually gloomy Billy & helps gives Marianne a warm sensuality that one wouldn't have thought possible with her voice at this point in her career. An even more shocking success is Marianne's cover of Goffin & King's (popularized by Herman's Hermits) "I'm Into Something Good" with Corgan behind the boards. She just might be proving she has a heart of gold after all.

That's not to say Marianne has lost her acid-drenched commentary on the darker side of love & life. "Song For Nico" (with former Eurythmic Dave Stewart) is a condensation of the life of the legendary German chanteuse in only 4 minutes & is one song that warrants the "parental advisory" sticker on the cover of KISSIN' TIME (BROKEN ENGLISH would have deserved one, too, but they weren't around yet in 1979).

"Sliding Through Life On Charm" is probably the song most likely to offend (especially with the line mixing sex & the clergy) on the album & no surprise, coming from Pulp leader Jarvis Cocker (whose album WE LOVE LIFE has finally reached American stores). It also is one of the most autobiographical songs Marianne has ever sung with her name actually mentioned in the lyrics.

Blur is another band who's been silent for a while (since 1999's 13), but as they go about crafting their next work, they take time out to work with Marianne on the title track. Not the outright shocker that is "Sliding Through Life On Charm", it still has that song's sense of brutal honesty, but with lyrics able to be heard by virgin ears.

The remaining two songs are quite good in their own right, but they're easily obscured by the high-profile collaborations of the others. "The Pleasure Song" is written with French pop maestro Etienne Daho & is a good example of Serge Gainsbourg's odes to free love that perked up ears in the late 1960s. "Love & Money" is a short 2-minute ditty co-written with Marianne's BROKEN ENGLISH partner Barry Reynolds, with him performing most of the music. I think this is one song that could have benefitted from a better production job, giving it more room to breathe.

The success of VAGABOND WAYS must have been a surprise to the music industry Marianne Faithfull has often had few good words to say about. Whereas that album was released by an independent label, KISSIN' TIME is released on Hut Records (subsidiary of the Virgin label). With Marianne enjoying a much more fruitful career (artistically) now than ever before, maybe her time to shine has finally come & on her own terms. Of course, KISSIN' TIME isn't exactly safe for listeners of all ages, but if you want to hear a veteran artist with just as much attitude as anyone else half her age, you'd be hard pressed to find anyone better than Marianne Faithfull.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars At the cutting edge of the time, June 9, 2002

By 

Pieter "Toypom" (Johannesburg) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Kissin Time (Audio CD)

Marianne has always been an expert at bouncing back from obscurity, as with the legendary Broken English in the early 1980s. Kissin' Time sees Faithfull still at the cutting edge of pop with assistance by Beck, Billy Corgan, Dave Stewart, Jarvis Cocker, and Blur on the title track. In her book Memories, Dreams and Reflections, a short chapter is devoted to discussing the songs and the musicians on Kissin' Time. Marianne claims that the style was very deliberately 1960s retro as if it were the follow-up to her work of that decade. Not predominantly aotobiographical, the album happily celebrates love & life with a theme of fandom permeating it.

I have always associated Marianne with other famous blondes of the 1960s like Nico and Anita Pallenberg, so it's apt that she does a tribute to the Velvet Underground chanteuse with the expert help of Dave Stewart. This era produced another Nico tribute; compare the song with the same title on the album How I Loved You by Angels of Light. But I miss the emotional resonance and authenticity of 1999's Vagabond Ways. After the opening track, the ironic Sliding Through Life On Charm with its wry & witty biographical references - a song co-written with Jarvis Cocker - is the first that held my attention.

I also love the lilting pop/reggae tune Love & Money and her cover of Goffin & King's Something Good, which to my mind most closely resembles the type of innocent 60s pop she used to do at the start of her career. If it weren't for the voice of course, that has dropped to a more husky tone. My tracks of choice also includes Sex With Strangers with its ironic comments and edgy beat. So this album is the 2004 manifestation of Marianne reinventing herself, and it's interesting but not always emotionally gripping and memorable. Still, Kissin' Time deserves four stars for musical variety and humour.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Rebirth of Cool, March 10, 2002

By 

rosecamp - See all my reviews

This review is from: Kissin Time (Audio CD)

This is what I call adult pop music.
Marianne Faithfull has seen highs and lows in life, and this record shows that she came to terms with her past. Her voice is unique, and musicians of a younger generation (Jarvis Cocker, Beck, Etienne Daho, Damon Albarn and Billy Corgan) helped her to write and orchestrate songs about emptiness ("Sex With Strangers"), the lives of Marianne Faithfull ("Sliding through Life on Charms") and Nico ("Song for Nico"), about growing ("Like Being Born") and about Love ("I'm On Fire" and "Kissin' Time").
The result is amazing: "I'm On Fire" made me cry, it is such a beautiful hymn! When she sings "...and everything will be alright", after all she's through it gives me so much hope, and it is very deep...
"Sex With Strangers"'s 80's-cool funk reminds me of "Sign Of The Times".
"Like Being Born" goes back to her folky beginnings.
"Sliding Through Life On Charm" is the main responsible for the "Explicit Lyrics"-Sticker. It strongly resembles Pulp's "Glory Days", I think I like the legend around it even better than the song itself (she tried to write that song for 20 years but couldn't find a rhyme, and one day she bumped into Jarvis Cocker and asked him to write it, he read her autobiography and delivered the lyrics, then she took another year and a half to understand them and this came out of it.)
The title-track with its voodoo-like repetetive guitar-lick and mantra-like vocals ("Your time will come again")rounds the whole thing off in a beautiful, soothing and uplifting way.
"Kissin' Time" is such an elegant way of being diverse!
My respect.