Marianne Faithfull, Negative Capability (BMG) ****

IT is the evening of her days, so what kind of album should Marianne Faithfull make for her 21st studio set?

Exactly this one, the most significant, honest recordings by the former Rolling Stones muse since her Broken English renaissance in 1979.

That record emerged after years of drug abuse, homelessness and anorexia; this one is shadowed by loneliness in Paris, her body now brittle with arthritis at 71, her voice torn and worn to a stately croak, as she contemplates the end, after "terrible accidents" and feeling "really damaged".

"But to die a good death is my dream," she wishes on Born To Live, her beautiful, grieving paean to her late old friend Anita Pallenberg, co-written with Ed Harcourt, the elegant English songwriter who is but one of a coterie of brilliant choices for Faithfull's musical forces, along with PJ Harvey's producer, Rob Ellis, and the dude of grunge, Mark Lanegan.

Johnny Cash's stark American Recordings, Leonard Cohen's You Want It Darker and David Bowie's Black Star have all faced down mortality, but from a male perspective. Here is the female view, whether reinterpreting Bob Dylan's It's All Over Now, Baby Blue or suffering night terrors as "bombs explode in Paris" in They Come At Night.

If you could cherry pick from one band to accompany Faithfull in her dowager days, as she sings of No Moon In Paris and Loneliest Person, it would be Nick Cave's Bad Seeds, and glory be, here are co-producer Warren Ellis's exquisite violin and Cave on backing vocals and piano on his co-written stand-out, The Gypsy Fairie Queen.

If Sunset Boulevard's Norma Desmond could have had her last hurrah, singing in the grand duchess manner of the latterday Marlene Dietrich, then Negative Capability (John Keats's phrase) would be the soundtrack. Aptly, as years go by, Faithfull reinterprets her signature song As Tears Go By for a third time, 23 years on from her Strange Weather album, now grave and gravelly, no longer wistful.

"I know I'm not young and I'm damaged, but I'm still pretty, kind and funny," Faithfull reconciles with the ticking clock, as she finds succour in abiding love.

Charles Hutchinson