First Listen: Marianne Faithfull, 'Give My Love To London' — npr.org

Marianne Faithfull's new album, Give My Love To London, comes out Nov. 11. Courtesy of the artist hide caption Marianne Faithfull's new album, Give My Love To London, comes out Nov. 11. In many classic stories, there comes a point where someone speaks from the corner and changes everything. A stranger reveals the secret that solves a mystery; a minor character finally unburdens herself, and her words reconfigure the plot. Marianne Faithfull's music comes from that place of shadow and revelation. In 50 years as a player in rock's history, the 67-year-old singer-songwriter has evolved from mod muse to punk survivor, from fecund ingenue to still-sexy crone, from the object of men's fantasies to the furiously authoritative subject of her own ongoing autobiography. Whether in her own compositions, like the title track of her classic 1979 album Broken English, or in her authoritative interpretations of work by songwriters ranging from Jagger and Richards to Patti Smith to Colin Meloy, Faithfull has spoken for the unnoticed, the vengeful and the oracular. "You don't know in hell who's talking," she spat, speaking for literature's greatest murderous barmaid, in her 1996 version of the Brecht/Weill classic "Pirate Jenny" — a song she mentions fondly in Give My Love To London's title track. Marianne Faithfull will always let you know.

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