Artist : Patti Smith
Album : Four From Twelve
Label : Columbia Records
Genre : Rock
Bitrate : 194 kbps avg
Source : CD (LP)
Playtime : 00:18:31 (27 MB)
Rls date : 2007-03-21
Store date : 2007-04-24
[Track List]
1. Helpless 4:02
2. Gimme Shelter 4:59
3. Everybody Wants To Rule The World 4:04
4. Pastime Paradise 5:26
Fate, reckons Patti Smith, helped select the dozen songs
on Twelve. After dreaming of Jim Morrison, for example,
she heard the Doors' 'Soul Kitchen' blaring from the garbage
truck next morning - a sign! Wherever the message to cover
'Everybody Wants to Rule the World' came from, it was a bum
steer - otherwise this is an entertaining sweep through the
rock canon that Smith has eloquently championed down the
years.
There are few radical reworkings - mostly it's just the
Patti Smith group and assorted pals (Tom Verlaine, Flea,
Sam Shepard) playing old favourites. If the backings sometimes
veer towards covers-band quality - no one, after all, is
likely to match Keith Richards's chops on 'Gimme Shelter' -
Smith carries off her grand homage with the most imperious
vocals she has summoned since Horses
The flavour of that 1975 debut album is never far from Twelve.
Maybe revisiting their roots reminded Patti and the boys why
they made records in the first place. Smith's rock poet muse
is certainly alive on most cuts, her deep voice declaiming,
yipping, soaring, and investing old lyrics with fresh dignity
and rhythm. 'Changing of the Guard' turns the gargled symbolism
of Dylan's original into rolling lines of free verse, 'Boy in
the Bubble' transforms Paul Simon's sunny ease into rock'n'roll
defiance, and even George Harrison's pious 'Within You Without
You' emerges renewed.
On 'Smells Like Teen Spirit', whose messy banjo backing is the
biggest make-over in the set, Smith extends Kurt Cobain's anguish
with her own scatted verse in praise of the 'children of the
junkyard'.
The tributes elsewhere are more straightforward - Neil Young's
'Helpless', Jefferson Airplane's 'White Rabbit' - but Smith's
belief in the power of the word can turn even Stevie Wonder's
daft 'Pastime Paradise' into a statement of passion and vision.
PS: Gotta sleep more, sorry :)