Music Review: Patti Smith - Twelve

In a lot of ways, this is a really bizarre release -- even by the artist's own standards -- for Patti Smith.

At this late stage of her career -- Patti Smith was just inducted into this year's class of the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame -- an album of well chosen covers by other artists could either be regarded as a brilliant career move or an uncharacteristic attempt at commercialism.

Twelve is actually neither of these things, which is what makes this album such a perplexing proposition. As hardcore fans already know, Patti Smith's best work can be found in the stream of consciousness poetry of such late seventies albums as Radio Ethiopia and the brilliant Horses. What many more casual fans may not realize is that Patti Smith's live performances from this same period were often chaotic affairs, as notable for the band's choices of cover versions by other artists as they were for Smith's own cosmic excursions into the spoken word.

Right now you can even find one such show from 1979 at CBGB's in New York streaming for free at Wolfgang's Vault. Here the original Patti Smith Group charges through versions of everything from Pete Townshend's "My Generation" to John Lennon's "Cold Turkey."

Coming nearly thirty years after such exhilarating live performances as that, Twelve is Patti Smith's first album to marry these two sides of the artist on a single album. On these cover versions of songs by the Stones, Doors, and Nirvana -- as well as less likely choices by Tears For Fears, Gregg Allman, and Stevie Wonder -- Smith shows both intensity and reverence. She also gives each song here her own unique individual stamp, occasionally in the form of her own stream of consciousness poetry, while remaining true to the spirit of the original versions of these songs.

Nowhere is this more evident than on her radical reworking of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Patti Smith re-envisions the post-punk anthem as a gothic sort of folk tune crackling with banjos and violins, before injecting some of her most hauntingly beautiful spoken poetry since "Birdland" from the Horses days. More straightforward (and unlikely to the point of being a little strange) are Smith's versions of Gregg Allman's "Midnight Rider" and Tears For Fears "Everybody Wants To Rule The World." Both of these receive very straight sounding treatments by Smith -- although her haunting vocal style adds particular weight to the dark lyrics of Allman's tune.

Article Author: Glen Boyd

You'll find Blogcritics assistant music editor Glen Boyd sharing his Thoughtmares on his personal blogs The World Wide Glen, and The Rockologist. In a previous life, Glen was a music professional and journalist whose work has appeared in The Rocket, SPIN, Pulse!, and The Source. …

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