While ex-comrades the Stones marked their 50th active year with lone highlight Doom And Gloom, Marianne celebrates her half-century with a career peak.
Her most grandiose but personal statement, Give My Love To London harnesses the power of 2005’s Before The Poison with a band including Bad Seeds violinist Warren Ellis and drummer Jim Sclavunos, Portishead guitarist Adrian Utley and keyboardist Ed Harcourt, plus producers Rob Ellis and Dimitri Tikovoi on drums/bass.
The latter pair create atmospheric backdrops for her rich, inimitable voice, marinated in everything life’s thrown at her and she’s triumphed over, from poignant ballad Love More Or Less to the antiwar Mother Wolf.
Faithfull’s very personal lyrics adorn music by Roger Waters (Sparrows Will Sing) and Nick Cave (Late Victorian Holocaust), the semi-spoken Going Home boasts a Seeds-style chorale, but she holds her own alone on I Get Along Without You Very Well. She has made her masterpiece; remarkable at any age.
