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Patti Smith
Gung Ho
Arista, 2000
Patti Smith has never stopped being reckless. At a time when
most songwriters can't see beyond their neighborhoods or
above their belts, the fifty-three-year-old Smith still insists that
rock is a gateway to revelation. She doesn't flinch from excess
or outsize emotions; she makes known her desire, her fury, her
exaltation, her grief. Drawn to extremes, she can be inspired or
klutzy, and she's rarely anything in between. For most of Gung
Ho, Smith is simply inspired.
Smith contemplated mortality and loss on her last two albums,
Gone Again and Peace and Noise, drawing inward after the
death in 1994 of her husband, Fred "Sonic" Smith of the MC5.
Now, with Gung Ho, she's back to life, taking on the whole
world. She belts manifestoes, plunges headlong into love, offers
benedictions and hurls herself into history and myth. She casts
herself as Salome in the slinky "Lo and Beholden," as the
accusatory ghosts of African-American slaves in the tolling
"Strange Messengers," as General Custer's lonesome wife in
the neo-Appalachian "Libbie's Song."
She does all of it with a revitalized band. The album's producer,
Gil Norton (whose crescendos for the Pixies were an
alternative-rock cornerstone), has subtly filled out the sound of
the Patti Smith Group without losing its handmade, jamming
essence. Guitar tones resonate through the mix, and new lines
snake through what used to be hollow space. Atmospheric
effects steal into the background, like the helicopters and
rhythmic breathing in "Gung Ho" itself, a meditation on Ho Chi
Minh.
"New Party" sounds like one of Smith's neo-Beat
improvisations -- "Why don't you, unhh, fertilize my lawn with
what's running from your mouth?" -- as she fools with her
voice: growling, stuttering, stretching syllables or talking tough
like Lou Reed. But the jam has been embellished; the band
moves from dissonant "Dancing Days"-style Zeppelin riffing to
anthemic rock to scrubbing funk, while overdubbed Pattis talk
back and urge her on.
There are echoes of Smith's contemporaries from the 1970s
punk-rock nexus at CBGB. The spy-movie wah-wah and
reverb of "Gone Pie" lead to a buoyant chorus fit for Blondie,
while "Persuasion" has a coiling guitar line fit for Television.
(Completing the connection, Television's Tom Verlaine sits in
on "Glitter in Their Eyes.") Smith can seem like a die-hard
hippie, thinking about Vietnam and proselytizing for universal
love and united action in songs like "One Voice" and "Upright
Come." But she's not looking backward. Over four jabbing
chords, "Glitter in Their Eyes" squares off against free-market
rapacity and the lures of materialism -- the "dust of diamonds
making you sneeze." Smith isn't withdrawing into a utopian
haze. She's ready to fight for her right to a higher purpose. (RS
837)
JON PARELES
--
gender is just an excuse, relationship shouldn't just be an excuse,
love is often an excuse, although sometimes these excuses are all
we have to hold onto,
death is the reason and living is the celebration
- Beth Orton
--
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