Album: Marianne Faithfull, Horses and High Heels (Dramatico)

Another year, another croaky signal from Planet Marianne.

It's another Hal Wilner production too, which means textural elegance and arpeggiated guitars in ambiguous keys, where minor and major shifts betoken the glamour of being her as much as signal mood. It's tragic, of course, and wistfully languorous. Songs are by Goffin/King, Jackie Lomax and Dulli/Lanegan, as well as La Dame herself. Her voice hangs inertly among racks of lustrous guitars like a worn shirt.