Pages tagged “patti smith”

An intense poetic encomium geared for Smith’s more adventurous fans

The mere premise of punk priestess Patti Smith and My Bloody Valentine’s erratic genius Kevin Shields collaborating is itself electrifying, and the fact that it captures a raw corner of Smith’s psyche urges closer inspection. Conceived as a eulogy to close friend Robert Mapplethorpe and imagining the inner space of his final voyage to see the Southern Cross, The Coral Sea is a giant Smith poem punctuated by Shields’ soundscapes. While the long and occasionally overwrought exposition is not for everyone, the intensity and untangled abandon of Smith’s performances will galvanize more loyal fans seeking yet another cathartic acid bath in her emotional storms.

After years of speculation, Patti Smith and Kevin Shields' legendary "Coral Sea Sessions" are finally getting a proper release this summer. Documenting the duo's spoken-word collaborations on June 22, 2005 and September 12, 2006 at the QEH in London, The Coral Sea pays tribute to the life of controversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, Smith's long-time friend. Although bootlegs of the performances have been floating around message boards and My Bloody Valentine fan sites for years, the double disc is the first official recording of the duo's London performances and is set for release on July 11 via Smith and Shields' new PASK imprint.

In other Shields-related news, My Bloody Valentine recently announced their first stateside performance in 16 years, picking this year's All Tomorrow's Parties New York for their debut. To put that time frame in perspective, the last time MBV performed stateside, Bill Clinton had yet to be elected President, Sinéad O'Connor was considered a family-friendly musician, and this very Paste writer was six years old. (I'll have you know that I was front-and-center at the show, recording the whole thing for my MBV Usenet newsgroup.)

Taking place on the weekend of Sept. 19-21 at the Kutsher's Country Club in upstate New York, the festival will feature Tortoise performing Millions Now Living Will Never Die, The Meat Puppets performing Meat Puppets II, Thurston Moore performing Psychic Hearts, Built to Spill performing Perfect From Now On and a whole slew of other rockin' bands like Shellac and Mogwai playing a variety of their own material. The first batch of tickets for the three day festival have sadly sold-out, although the ATP NY website promises more tickets will become available soon, with accommodations at a nearby hotel.

ATP NY Lineup:
My Bloody Valentine
Fuck buttons
Polvo
Low
Edan with Dagha
Mogwai
The Drones
Built to Spill Performing Perfect from Now On
Wooden Shjips
Shellac
Thee Silver Mount Zion Orchestra
Autolux
Meat Puppets performing Meat Puppets II
Tortoise performing Millions Now Living Will Never Die
Thurston Moore performing Psychic Hearts

Related Links:
PattiSmith.net
MyBloodyValentine.co.uk
ATPFestival.com

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Her little group has always been and always will be until the end

Literally from the get-go, Patti Smith has played other people’s music, opening 1975’s Horses with an explosive deconstruction of Them’s “Gloria,” and perfectly capping 2004’s Trampin’ with the title spiritual. To mild surprise, Twelve—Smith’s new covers collection—features nearly all boomer standards, most performed with a disarming straightness. Only Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” finds Smith taking any real liberties. There, Lenny Kaye, playwright Sam Shepard (on banjo), and some vintage Village bohos lay a dirge while Smith uses Kurt Cobain’s text as a verbal springboard. More Pete Seeger than Cat Power, her interpretations sometimes feel too internalized to startle, especially the Stones’ “Gimme Shelter” and Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” both potentially explosive songs that never quite detonate. Where urgency isn’t required, like on Neil Young’s “Helpless” and Tears For Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” Smith is magical. Twelve is to garage rock what rec-room spreads are to dingy basement dens: not as transcendent, but still good fun.

Patti Smith singing “Smells Like Teen Spirit”? How about “Pastime Paradise”?

You can hear those and more beginning April 24 when Columbia releases Smith’s first-ever covers album and first disc of new studio recordings since 2004’s trampin’.

Twelve features collaborations with playwright Sam Shepard on banjo, Chili Peppers’ bassist Flea and the Black Crowes’ Rich Robinson. On the twelve-song album, Smith and her band cover everyone from Neil Young and Bob Dylan to Tears for Fears and Jefferson Airplane. To hear their reinvention of The Rolling Stones’ “Gimme Shelter,” click here.

Twelve tracklist:

1. Are You Experienced?
2. Everybody Wants To Rule The World
3. Helpless
4. Gimme Shelter
5. Within You Without You
6. White Rabbit
7. Changing Of The Guards
8. The Boy In The Bubble
9. Soul Kitchen
10. Smells Like Teen Spirit
11. Midnight Rider
12. Pastime Paradise

Related Links:
Patti Smith’s homepage
Patti Smith on MySpace
“Gimme Shelter” MP3

A return to the triumph of the Punk Priestess

It was as audacious a calling card as any in rock history: a gentle piano figure introduces an unrepentant, staidly defiant voice that sets the record straight from the start: “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine.” Then it’s off to the races, mixing the profane with the sublime as the album builds to a frenzy, mixing in Van Morrison’s “Gloria” in a brilliant double-entendre. Patti Smith’s first record exploded onto the scene in 1975, establishing a bridge between Bob Dylan and Johnny Rotten. This expanded, remastered edition includes not only a live B-side of The Who’s “My Generation” recorded with John Cale, but a solid live rendition of the entire album from Smith’s recent performance at the Meltdown Festival. So while you may have either one of the two previous CD releases of this essential disc, it’s a worthwhile upgrade.

Former punk iconoclast Patti Smith once said the older she got, the more she appreciated beauty in the mundane—ordinary folks who performed their jobs exceptionally well, like a dry cleaner who took pride in delivering perfectly-pressed shirts every single time. Smith’s own craft has matured along similarly classy lines. Lately, her prose and poetry have received numerous awards, both at home and abroad, and she’s just explored the touchy subject of 9/11 via her drawings, silk-screen prints and silver-gelatin-processed Polaroids. This grande dame even helped launch the Tate Gallery’s exhaustive William Blake exhibit in London. Gone, then, is that cocaine-eyed firebrand who glared out from the cover of Smith’s ragged 1975 debut, Horses.

And in its stead? A wiser, mellower malcontent—as Smith appears on her new Trampin’—with roughly the same amount of Horses steam, but delicate, gracious new ways of releasing it. She no longer needs to scream to be heard, which is certainly becoming, if not always entertaining. For example, the half-spoken, half-quasi-blues “Radio Baghdad” pushes its “Extend your hand” metaphor way past its neighborly parameters into heavy-handed pedantic territory. It’s neither informative nor topical—just more rehashed headlines that have already been ground into grist. Smith is at her most awkward when she attempts to emulate that ’70s-punk stance on the tribal stomp “Jubilee” and the AC/DC-ish “Stride of The Mind.” But when she treats her topics—and tones—with adult-size kid gloves, the results are almost magical. Smith tips her hat to the Tate with “My Blakean Year,” a sonnet set to a tick-tock beat and purple poetry like “One road was paved in gold / One road was just a road.” “Trespasses” treads through traditional English folk, “Mother Rose” ching-chings along on a taffy-tambourine rhythm, and the title track—an old Gospel cover—wafts past on pliant piano chords, played by Smith’s daughter Jesse. A gorgeous processional, “Cartwheels,” was penned for Jesse, and is brimming with genuine motherly concern: “Want to grasp what brings you down / Open up those eyes of brown.” Smith’s once-baying voice has somehow grown stronger through the years, more adept at wreathing its way into lyrical emotion.

A gentle folk-fueled ballad, “Peaceable Kingdom,” finds Smith at her passionate best, subtly praying for a Rousseau-serene world-peace setting, firmly believing that one day frail humanity might allow it to occur. Fat chance, of course. Not as long as there’s fossil fuel to be pirated. But at least Smith has the optimism—and well-seasoned wisdom—to dream of some future Eden.