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Proof of Faithfull’s stature can be found in the A-list collaborators on each of her albums. The raspy singer’s latest effort is no exception. From the dark, dance-oriented “Sex with Strangers” with Beck and the dreamy “Wherever I Go” with Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan to the brash, autobiographical “Sliding Through Life on Charm” with Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker and the disturbing title track with Blur’s Damon Albarn, this is ambitious, engaging stuff. Not for the faint-hearted.

Last time around, she collaborated with Beck and Billy Corgan, with mixed results. This time, Faithfull picks the perfect partners for her tortured cabaret-singer persona: iconoclasts Nick Cave and PJ Harvey. Cave contributes “Crazy Love,” with its gypsy strings, and the strange “Desperanto,” which features Faithfull rapping. Harvey produced five songs, including the disturbing “No Child of Mine” and “The Mystery of Love,” which rivals Faithfull’s best work on her 1979 classic Broken English. Chilling stuff.

Always compelling, singer-actress Marianne Faithfull was once Mick Jagger’s girlfriend and a darling of England’s swinging ’60s scene. A gorgeous girl of noble ancestry (her mother was an Austrian baroness with roots in the Habsburg Dynasty), she scored her first pop hit at 18, singing Mick’s and Keith Richards’ “As Tears Go By.” But her decline came as rapidly as her rise. Throughout the ’70s, her career plummeted and her life was beset by heartache, drug abuse and suicide attempts. Faithfull launched her comeback with a series of strong, startling confessional albums, including Broken English, Dangerous Acquaintances, Strange Weather and Blazing Away. The latter two were produced by H...