Marianne Faithfull
Oh, to have a granny as cool as Marianne Faithfull. “Hey mister! You have finally met your match. Now everybody wants to kiss my snatch,” Faithfull deadpans in “Sliding Through Life on Charm,” a collaboration with Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker that appears midway through this 11-song set. And, apparently, everybody does: Beck and Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan collaborate on three tracks apiece; and Blur, Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart and the aforementioned Cocker together account for three more. Although the robotic “Sex With Strangers” sounds like an outtake from Beck’s pro-tooled funk disc Midnite Vultures, Faithfull’s cover of Beck’s “Nobody’s Fault but My Own,” from his masterpiece Mutations, is quite swell. The Stewart track, “Song for Nico,” is a thumbnail sketch of a fallen contemporary, and Corgan’s tracks include a shimmering remake of Herman’s Hermits’ “I’m Into Something Good.” Go figure. It works.