Over the past decade, Marianne Faithfull has collaborated with Jarvis Cocker and Beck, Lou Reed and Dr John, Damon Albarn and PJ Harvey; the list goes on. Yet seeing her share a stage with jazz guitarist Bill Frisell, a key member of the band on her 1987 album Strange Weather, you wonder why she has ever bothered playing with anyone else. The two of them are in perfect harmony – which, considering the extent to which time and cigarettes have wrought havoc on Faithfull's voice, says much for how sympathetic an accompanist Frisell is.

He doesn't do anything particularly showy. Often he simply underscores Faithfull's vocal line – but he does so responsively, modulating his rhythm to suit hers, cushioning her in melody so that her voice sounds richer and firmly in tune. When she falters, he does, too: Bob Dylan's I'll Keep It With Mine eludes them both, as does John Prine's All the Best, Faithfull overcomplicating the vocal in each case. But when her voice thickens with righteous anger through John Lennon's Working Class Hero, his playing becomes murkier, bolder, more complex; the more lachrymose she sounds in She, the more his notes blur, like light seen through tears.

What Faithfull lacks in range, she compensates for in feeling: there is now an expressiveness to As Tears Go By, her first hit, that she couldn't achieve as a teen. More than once you spot her wiping away a tear – only for her to undercut the poignancy by hacking into a tissue or drowning a cigarette in water between songs. "You know I'm disgusting," she laughs, and you wonder if it's the benign presence of Frisell by her side who helps her feel so winningly at ease.

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