Patti Smith – “Twelve” (2007)

“Well, I’m back…” And this may seem an odd album to re-start with. Patti Smith has been making records for a long time. Her status as a kind of combination crone-priestess (I mean this in an utterly honourable sense) and elder stateswoman is beyond question. Her concerts are still spiritually uplifting events as much as rock’n'roll shows. Meanwhile, new albums are respectfully received but add little to the legacy. Twelve isn’t about to change that and like most covers records, it’s a bit of curates egg.

It starts off strongly enough with “Are You Experienced”. Held together by Flea’s fluid exploratory bass, it comes over as a stately meditation on Hendrix’s original. Then things dip fairly sharply. “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” (yes, that song) is a pedestrian pub re-tread. If Smith’s after a drastic reinvention a la Donnie Darko’s “Mad World, she misses by a mile. Neil Young’s “Helpless” is pleasant but you woldn’t rush to but it on again. “Gimme Shelter” has wispy slide guitar line by Tom Verlaine that deconstructs the already skeletal original leads to two or three nervy notes but the band and Smith are again undone by journeyman competence.

Things look up with “Within You, Without You” and “White Rabbit” which respectively recall the arrangements on Gone Again and replace the flamenco flicker of the original with a military snare and dirgey tempo that actually works quite well. Neither are a patch on the original, though. And lets not even mention “Soul Kitchen” or “The Boy In The Bubble”…

What rescues the record is, of all things a take on Dylan’s “Changing of the Guards” and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”.

The Dylan cover does what all great cover versions does – sends you back to the original with a heightened appreciation of what was originally under-achieved and is perhaps more fully realised by the cover. “Changing of the Guards” comes from Street Legal, one of Dylan’s most underrated sets of songs. Dylan was just about to seriously lose his way in the studio, an impasse that would continue for nearly twenty years (bar the fluke of Oh Mercy). The original is lost is a turgid murk of backing singers, horns and a seven piece rock band. Smith and her bands stripped-back, bar-band treatment works brilliantly, bringing out one of Dylan’s last masterpieces of sustained poetic flow and making it utterly her own. It’s that rarity, a single performance that makes an entire album worthwhile. It’s hypnotic, pulsing, a reverie of “menace and prayer” that Smith utterly nails with a performance at once understated and vital – “And cruel death with it’s pale ghost retreating/Between the King and the Queen of Swords.”

“Smells like..” is just plain odd. The sleeve notes describe it as a ‘back-porch’ performance. The main guitar lines are carried by a tentative banjo and the slowed tempo brings out the kind of gravel and gravitas that only Patti Smith seems able to pull off without dipping into parody. She turns the song into a knowing commentary on her own outsider status and it suits her surprisingly well. You’ll want to play it again, and that’s quite an achievement.

For the remainder, “Midnight Rider” has a pleasant lilt and the fact that Coolio has destroyed that Stevie Wonder song forever doesn’t help Patti Smith’s version much either. Buy it for the Dylan cover – why couldn’t she just do a straight album of misunderstood Dylan chestnuts? That would be worth its weight in gold.

Visit PattiSmith.net and the inevitable MySpace page. Or buy Twelvefrom Amazon.

New Ruins – “The Sound They Make” (2007)

Just downloaded this from Emusic.  In many ways, ‘The Sound They Make’ is a little too cosily close to the acoustic guitars/rough-hewn harmonies, skeletal pedaled piano and cello territory that marks out so many ‘elegant’ Americana bands.  But when it’s done so well, it’s irresistible.  “Ships” kicks the record off at a deceptive rush.  “Your Ghost” might be almost too self-consciously ‘entrancing’ if it didn’t succeed so well.  The songs are uniformly short, sharp and to the point, reminiscent of Wheat in the hazy atmospheres they evoke. This one’s a keeper.

MySpace page

Tori Amos – “American Doll Posse” (2007)

Look, for my money, Tori Amos is as rock and roll as they come. This is a woman who suckles piglets, damn it – beat that, Osbourne. On the other hand, it’s been a few years since she put out a record that was anywhere near essential. “Scarlet’s Walk” was bland, “The Beekeeper” felt ever so slightly phoned in and the collection of covers had it’s moments but could only ever be seen as an exercise in marking time. What all three records had in common, however, where elaborate, impenetrable ‘concepts’. More work, in fact, seemed to have put in on the concepts than the songs.

“American Doll Posse” is no different in terms of an ambitious central conceit (five characters, including “Tori” sing the sings, sometimes providing backing vocals for each, emblematic of an attempt to unify the fractured feminine psyche…). Thankfully, as with portions of Neil Young’s Greendale, the concept this time seems to have at least partially reinvigorated Tori’s muse.

Things don’t start out promisingly. The one and half minute “Yo George” is as grim as it sounds. Dubya has bad policies. Abraham Lincoln is missing. Thankfully, the next three songs pick up sharply. Her best records (“Under The Pink”, “Boys For Pele”) have always had an abundance of sharp, creative arrangements and melodies underpinned by that dynamic, relentlessly exploratory piano technique – at once thunderous rhythm section and lea instrument. “Big Wheel”, “Bouncing Off Clouds” and “Teenage Hustling” live up to their predecessors, moving between edge-of-funkiness of “Big Wheel” and four-square rockers like Fleetwood Mac powered by Elton John (in 1975, that would have been a good thing, ok?).

Thereafter, it gets a bit hit and miss but with twenty one songs squashed into seventy eight minutes, there’s plenty of scope for constructing your own director’s cut. Mine included the the up-tempo pop of “Secret Spell”, “Posse Bonus”’s slightly disturbing demands to ‘eat your broccoli’ and “Dragon”, the big let’s-wrap-it-all-up ballad that concludes the whole curious affair.

At this point in time, I don’t know if anyone beyond fans is listening but if Amos dropped off your radar ten years ago, you might want to think about picking up where you left off. Me, I’m just glad of a new Tori Amos record that finally makes me (almost) listen all the way through.

Find out rather more than you probably need to know about Santa, Pip, and the gang at or the inevitable Tori MySpace.

Quick round up – Deerhoof, Joanna Newsom, Coco Rosie and Colleen

No time for anything intense today.  So here are a few notes on what’s getting heavy rotation on my iPod at the moment:

• Deerhoof – “Friend Opportunity” (2007).  Yes, it’s quirky and yes, you never know from one second to the next where the tunes are going.  Put aside the Saidian issues with exoticising cute Japanese singers and revel in the loose as a goose strangeness of it all. Plus great playing, great lyrics (“If you were a dog and I were a man/I’d throw a stick for you”) and math-rocky poppiness.  The eleven minute epic concluding the set moves from west coast jazz through no-wave noise and clean skronk to breathy, relaxed resolution without a wasted note.  Don’t be put off by some of the press – this is an utterly accessible, delightful album.
• Joanna Newsom – “and the Ys Street Band” (2007).  One old song, one new (about cockles) and a drastically extended and re-tooled “Cosmia”, shorn of the Van Dyke Parkes Baroque strings but  including  some great banjo playing.  Essentially Joanna and her touring band taking a run at this and that with the benefit of hindsight.  Old  and recent songs re-imagined and re-invigorated and the new one  is equally delightful.
• I’ve been wrestling with three sample songs off the new Coco Rosie album (2007).   I’ll let you know.  So far, makes me think of Califone – admirable, complex, unique etc but kind of hard to love (extreme tweeness alert).
• Colleen – “The Golden Morning” (2005).  French ambient artist on the Leaf label.  Think Susumu Yokota but far more organic and emotive.  Eno’s “Day of Radiance” maybe?  Lots of (gasp) real instruments.  New album upcoming, can’t wait.

So am I so wrong about Coco Rosie?   I want to believe…

The Ponys – “Turn The Lights Out” (2007)

The Ponys are an unpretentious rock’n’roll band from Chicago and “Turn The Lights Out” is their third album. It’s fabulous. Great songs, clanging, garage-band production and awesome guitar solos. Twelve fierce little nuggets ranging from the Cramps-like stomp of “Everyday Weapon” to the “Day Dream Nation” riffola of “Poser Psychotic”. Along the way, “Small Talk” merges a little shoe-gazer shimmer without losing an ounce of this band’s power.

The trick is the utter clarity of the arrangements where those little details that make all the difference – a phased solo here, a chiming overdub there, the harmony that comes in at just the right moment – work to maximum advantage. Nothing outstays its welcome and every song has that kind of “play me again NOW” quality people pay that 4 None Blondes woman Goldman Sachs bonus-sized amounts of money for.

You want more highlights? “1209 Seminary” takes off in a rush of surf guitars and tremelo and keeps on accelerating. It’s a record of crescendos, not climaxes.

Matador has two mp3s up. Download them, marvel at the best guitar noise I’ve heard all year and go buy the album.