This came out in 2000 — or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
Let’s face facts: When you hear the name Marianne Faithfull, you probably think of three songs: 1) As Tears Go By; 2) Sister Morphine; 3) Broken English.
Well, more than two decades after her last hit (single, that is) and even longer since she was best-known as a rug-clad paramour of Mick Jagger, Faithfull has finally issued an album that just might add a few more tunes to that list. Returning to a contemporary musical ouevre again for the first time in over a decade (her last few discs have been tributes to Kurt Weill or collaborations with Angelo Badalamenti), Faithfull wraps her unmistakably world-weary, whiskey-and-cigarettes rasp around a half-score of sparsely elegant, bleakly haunted heartbreakers fit for Marlene Dietrich, beginning with the confessional pathos of the title track and a wrist-slashingly sumptuous Roger Waters tune (Incarceration Of A Flower Child), and slowly building to a smoky, Latin-tinged take on Leonard Cohen’s Tower Of Song. “Do you remember me? … I coulda been a contender,” Faithfull wistfully understates on the lushly sparse File it Under Fun From the Past. With Vagabond Ways, it’s clear she’s still capable of delivering a knockout.
