Marianne

Marianne Crebassa's new album celebrates her French-Spanish roots. Centered around French composers taking inspiration from Spain and Spanish composers, Séguedilles is a mix of opera arias and songs from composers Bizet, Massenet, de Falla, Mompou, Offenbach, Guridi, Ravel, and Saint-Saëns. It features hits such as the "Habanera" from Bizet's Carmen and Falla's "Vivan los que rien" from La Vida breve. Crebassa portrays 5 strong female characters Carmen, Dulcinée, Concepcion, Périchole, and Salud. She recorded the album with the Choeur & Orchestre National du Capitole de Toulouse conducted by Ben Glassberg.

A veteran of Jordi Savall's Hespèrion XX and XXI, gambaist Marianne Muller makes her Zig Zag Territories debut with this disc of music by the great French Baroque composer Marin Marais. The repertoire is daunting: the ingenious and evocative Le Labyrinthe, the 32 virtuoso variations on Les Folies d'Espagne, and the 12-movement Suite in E minor from Marais' Second Book of Pièces de viole. These are works that require not just virtuosity, stamina, intense expressivity, and soulful beauty of tone.

This box collects several recordings of Satie's piano music by Dutch pianist Reinbert de Leeuw, going back as far as 1977, with an English-language DVD (not reviewed, but the idea is attractive) including a fictionalized presentation of Satie's relationship with artist Suzanne Valadon (after they broke up, he hung in his window cataloging her faults, but the film apparently doesn't get to the fun stuff). The provenance of the music on the third CD, consisting mostly of songs and featuring soprano Marjanne Kweksilber, is unclear from the booklet, and it's a poor choice for the non-Francophone – no song texts are provided at all. The piano music from de Leeuw is another matter, however. It is immediately distinctive in its slow tempos and dreamy, rather lugubrious tone.

Faithfull was still known primarily as a pop singer when she put out North Country Maid, but this is in fact very close to a pure folk album, with a bit of influence from pop, rock, blues, and jazz. Largely overlooked even by Faithfull fans, it's actually a quite respectable effort, and probably her best LP (other than greatest-hits compilations) from the time when her voice was still on the high side. Ably backed by sessionmen including guitarists Jon Mark and Jim Sullivan, she interprets mostly traditional material on this record, including "She Moved Through the Fair," "Wild Mountain Thyme," "Sally Free and Easy," and "Scarborough Fair." There are some mid-'60s covers too, though, including Donovan's "Sunny Goodge Street" and Tom Paxton's "Last Thing on My Mind"…

In early 1971, Marianne Faithfull – whose personal life was not in the best shape and whose commercial prospects were idle as she had released just one single since early 1967 – recorded an album's worth of material with producer Mike Leander, who had worked with Faithfull in the 1960s. Leander hoped to place the album with Bell Records, but despite some initial positive feedback, Bell rejected the record after it was completed.

Digitally remastered, enhanced and expanded deluxe two CD edition of her 1979 album. Disc One contains the original album as an enhanced disc. Disc Two contains the entire original mix of the album which was thought to have been lost but surfaced during the tape research for this Deluxe Edition. Also included are a re-record of "Sister Morphine" only previously available on the Marianne Faithfull anthology, Perfect Strangers and four bonus tracks in the form of the 7" and 12" mixes of "Broken English" and "Why'd Ya Do It ?", which appear on CD for the very first time. Universal.

The just-announced benefit album The Faithful: A Tribute to Marianne Faithfull, featuring Iggy Pop, Cat Power, Shirley Manson, Tanya Donelly and Peaches, is on Bandbox exclusive pink + white hand poured vinyl! The Faithful sports 19 spirited selections from Marianne's songbook, including Tracy Bonham's take on 1964 chart-topper "As Tears Go By," a duet of her arrangement of "Working Class Hero" between Cat Power and Iggy Pop plus Shirley Manson (Garbage) and Peaches' cover of 1979's "Why D'Ya Do It." The project's first single, "This Little Bird" by Tanya Donelly (Belly, Throwing Muses) and the Parkington Sisters, is now streaming.