Patti
Patti Smith
Twelve
**1/2
I can die happy, now that I’ve heard Patti Smith cover Tears for Fears. All right, not really. Not even close. More like, I want to kill myself, now that I’ve heard Patti Smith cover Tears for Fears. Not that I hate Tears for Fears. Or Patti Smith. I just hate hearing her cover “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” A lot.
Punk rock’s free-spirit poet/priestess seems to be a bit less free, a little less spirited and a lot less punk now that she’s inside the industry’s Hall of Fame, judging from the first all-covers album of her off-again, on-again 33-year career. I truly believed Smith’s haunting voice could cool-ify any tune, until I heard her by-the-book renditions of such FM radio fare as “Gimme Shelter,” “Midnight Rider” and “Helpless.” I’d also have expected a few lesser-known nuggets with appropriately mystical lyrics—perhaps in lieu of the anachronistic “turnaround jump shot” line from Paul Simon’s “The Boy in the Bubble”—not to mention a compelling read of the already uber-trippy “White Rabbit.” Alas, not so.
Twelve isn’t entirely without keepers: “Are You Experienced?” slinks rowdily from the female point of view, Dylan’s “Changing of the Guards” provides a bountiful lyrical arsenal and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” absolutely slays, augmented by a spoken-word middle stretch that hints at what might have been had Patti and Tears for Fears never bumped heads.