Album review: Marianne Faithfull – Give My Love to London

Marianne Faithfull is a brilliant as ever on her 20th album.

Marianne Faithfull's Give My Love to London.

Give My Love to London Marianne Faithfull

(Dramatico)

Four stars

Marianne Faithfull is one of rock’s great survivors and her 20th album, conceived during convalescence from a back injury last year, bears all the hallmarks of her hallowed career and heritage.

It's always a shame when we define great women by the men they loved – yes, Faithfull dated Mick Jagger, nearly 45 years ago – but Give My Love to London is best described by the great men who worked on it.

The title track is a baroque-pop ode written with the country legend Steve Earle. The single Sparrows Will Sing, written by Roger Waters, is a prose poem protesting against modern life.

Nick Cave's Late Victorian Holocausts, a tale of desolate dependence, was clearly written with Faithfull in mind.

A single female collaboration with Anna Calvi gives the album one of its most hummable moments in Falling Back, before closing with the 1930s standard I Get Along Without You Very Well, rearranged for harp, strings and blues guitar. Throughout, the arrangements are lush but restrained. It is unlikely to win any new fans, but as an ageing legend weighing in with a worthy and weighty work, you could not ask for more.