Give Patti Smith’s album
\nGone Again<\/i> the critic proof award of 1996. Although this
\nalbum was still wrapped in cellophane, I knew I had to respect how
\nthe album came about. For critics who thrive on sympathy, Smith
\nlost her husband and her brother in the same year. For other
\ncritics, it’s a new album from the high priestess of punk. How
\ncould you dis an artist who fluidly brought beat poetry, punk and
\nraw feminism into two classic albums,
\nHorses<\/i> and
\nEaster<\/i>?<\/p>\n
When all is said and done though, the content of the album is
\nwhat will endure. And luckily for us, Patti Smith does have
\nsomething to say with
\nGone Again<\/i>. The album is a quiet, burning eulogy to her
\nhusband Fred “Sonic” Smith, but it never sinks into self-pity.<\/p>\n
The album kicks off with one of the last collaborations Smith
\ndid with her husband, “Gone Again.” It’s one of the two hard
\nrockers on the album. Smith wisely doesn’t try to recapture her
\nwild, unrestrained fury of “Rock And Roll Nigger”; instead she
\ncomes off as a scarred warrior. “I have a winter’s tale\/how vagrant
\nhearts relent prevail”, that line lays the theme of the entire
\nalbum.<\/p>\n
“Beneath The Southern Cross” is more like the tempo of the rest
\nof the album. With the help of her old band member, Lenny Kaye,
\n“Southern Cross” is a beautiful acoustic piece. The music
\nbackground is miminal and organic part due to producer Malcolm
\nBurn, who produced Midnight Oil’s hugely overlooked gem
\nBreathe<\/i> last year. While the music takes a back seat, Smith
\nlets her lyrical poetry loose. No one I know could say “equatorial
\nbliss” as gorgeous as Smith can.<\/p>\n
Fred Smith is not the only artist that Smith mourns over in
\nGone Again<\/i>. In “About A Boy”, Smith pays tribute to Kurt
\nCobain. I thought this song would sink the album. Clocking in at
\nclose to nine minutes, and after a flood of Cobain tribute songs by
\nother bands, I thought that this would just become another “tribute
\nsong”. The distorted, airy feedback of the guitars and Smith’s
\ngrowls made the song seem a lot shorter than I thought. It also
\ncontains one of
\nGone Again<\/i>‘s great moments, just as the song ends, there’s a
\nbrief pause, and you can hear Smith take in a breath and sigh
\nsoftly. The effect is devestating.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, a couple of songs on
\nGone Again<\/i> don’t showcase Patti Smith’s talents as well as
\nthey should. “My Madrigal” is a nice, but somewhat forgetful ode to
\nher husband. For as strong as a writer as Smith is, the chorus
\n“Oh..’til death do us part” is weak. In “Farewell Reel”, Smith
\nactually does the poet cardinal sin of rhyming “died” with
\n“cried”.<\/p>\n
For the occasional lyrical slip up, Smith more than redeems
\nherself with a back to back display of nearly flawless beauty with
\n“Wing” and “Ravens”. In “Ravens”, a mandolin plays softly while
\nSmith sounds like an artist with a renewed purpose. While Courtney
\nLove may be the crowned princess of punk for the moment, Smith is
\ncontent as an elder stateswoman. Elder as in experience though, not
\nnostalgia. In her cover of Bob Dylan’s “Wicked Messenger”, Smith
\nturns the song into something that is all her own – sounding fresh
\nand alive.<\/p>\n
\nGone Again,<\/i> for me, had to wait a year before I wrote a
\nreview. It’s easy to get caught up in the drama of an artist making
\na return after a long absence. It’s even more distorting when you
\nlook at what Smith has gone through and accomplished. But take all
\nof that away, and you’ve got a geniunely good album that seems to
\nbe a great bookend to
\nHorses<\/i>.
\nGone Again<\/i> could have coasted on sympathy, but Smith sees
\nher loss as a change as natural as birth. “Death to the world\/alive
\nI awoke”, she sings in “Dead To The World”. Let’s hope Smith’s next
\nmuse won’t be as traumatic of an experience for her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":24498,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"artist":[5805],"rating":[5617],"class_list":["post-35701","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-patti-smith","rating-rating-b-plus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/35701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35701"},{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=35701"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=35701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}