There are comeback albums, and then there is Marianne Faithfull’s “Broken English.”

When it came out in 1979, “Broken English” marked more than Ms. Faithfull’s return to pop and rock after a dozen years lost to drug addiction and homelessness: It illustrated a radical metamorphosis, from the party-happy Swinging London aristocrat of the mid-1960s to a gravel-voiced, noir truth-sayer.

Now, the downtown rock raconteuse Tammy Faye Starlite is celebrating the 40th anniversary of the album — “my magnum opus, my gesamtkunstwerk,” she says, narrating the show as Ms. Faithfull — in “ Why’d Ya Do It, ” a hybrid of séance, lecture and concert.

Music nerds will delight in the wealth of inside references and jokes, as when Ms. Starlite refers to 1979 as the moment before Reagan, MS-DOS, acid wash “and Don Henley’s solo career.” There is even a living connection to “Broken English” onstage: The guitarist Barry Reynolds, who helped write and played on parts of the album, is in the five-piece backing band.

At the Wednesday performance, Lenny Kaye , Patti Smith’s longtime guitarist, opened the evening with Ms. Smith’s “Ghost Dance” — which Ms. Faithfull covered.