Marianne Faithfull

Paid import price for this--it was out in the U.K. in January, released here last week--and, still, it was a bargain. The one-time Rolling Stones sleeping bag best known for a handful of cult releases and a stint sleeping in the street with a needle in her arm returns with...

By Robert Wilonsky

August 15, 2002

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Paid import price for this--it was out in the U.K. in January, released here last week--and, still, it was a bargain. The one-time Rolling Stones sleeping bag best known for a handful of cult releases and a stint sleeping in the street with a needle in her arm returns with a handful of young men at her arm and, likely, her feet; never has a pop goddess weathered so much abuse and self-abuse and yet emerged more desired for it. This is her best album since she sang in Broken English, which was made around the time most of her new collaborators--among them Beck, Blur, Pulp's Jarvis Cocker and Smashing Pumpkin Billy Corgan--were in elementary school; here's to you, Mrs. Robinson, Damon loves you more than you will ever know.

Faithfull knows it, too, which is why she opens the latest comeback with "Sex With Strangers," an ode to anonymous doin' it written and performed with Beck; "bored, you thought you'd try a little danger," she offers, and it's a compelling invite. So, too, is "I'm On Fire," on which she and Corgan shove a bed onto the dance floor, though, blessedly, the Great Pumpkin lets Ms. Faithfull write in the sheets by her lonesome. Though the Blur title track, all Britpop till ya drop and ya don't stop, bests any of Albarn's side projects--time to quit monkeying around, dude--it's Beck who brings out the best in Faithfull: "Like Being Born" might as well be titled "Like Being Born Again" (it recalls her '60s halcyon heyday, when tears went by), and her cover of "Nobody's Fault" is haunting and harrowing and heartbreaking where his was, well, just haunting.

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