Patti Smith has earned the right to mourn. Considering what she's been
through these last few years
But even those expecting a torrent of unexpurgated torment may not be
prepared for the groan that tears through the ballad "Wing," one of 10
original songs on her brilliant and tender Gone Again (Arista), in stores
Tuesday.
It's a death groan, a sound from the depths, cold and bitter and hard and
tuneless. And though it lasts only a few measures, it hovers over the
album's more tempered moments like a wounded animal's cry. It's the voice
of grief itself, a striking interruption of "Wing"'s message of hope and
vision of heaven.
That wracked, cracked groan
Especially death.
After years of poetry that knew no limits, and was set atop raw rock and
roll that acknowledged no limits, Smith returns by grappling with the
notion of a finite end.
The fragility of life is one of the things she's learned about since the
early '80s, when she walked away from stardom to raise two children. (She
reappeared on a 1988 collaboration with her husband, Dream of Life.) But
Smith doesn't treat this wisdom as precious or special. She shares it
through simple lullabies and elegies concerned with realities most youth
culture seeks desperately to escape.
Retooling three-chord rock to fit her meditative mood, Smith has created
a song cycle with universal resonance. The compositions on Gone Again can
all be viewed as part of Smith's healing process, but none feels insular or
closed.
Instead, Smith claws through her loss to discover unexpected inspiration.
"About a Boy," her expression of grief over Kurt Cobain's suicide, leads us
to appreciate the Nirvana lead singer's visionary contributions. The
elliptical "Boy" is an eight-minute crescendo: Starting with an indeterminate
guitar drone, it builds methodically, one arpeggio at a time, until it
reaches the controlled fury of the final verse. Here, Smith employs the
measured tones of religious ritual: "From a chaos raging sweet, from the
deep and dismal street; toward another kind of peace, toward the great
emptiness."
Elsewhere, Smith sings with arresting earnestness, as though she feels a
responsibility to get her songs across and is willing to be more delicate in
order to do so. She is grateful to be a survivor: She sings in a
celebratory, neo-country twang about having her senses reawakened after
being "Dead to the World." Her voice merges with a cello on the doleful
chorus of "My Madrigal" (a repetition of the words "till death do us part")
and creates a plain, forthright beauty unlike anything she's done before.
She playfully exaggerates the grunted chorus of the single "Summer Cannibals."
At every turn, Smith's musicians
For all the moments of catharsis, the emphasis never strays from the songs.
Smith may have had an agenda when she sat down to write, but in her
unburdening she did not neglect her craft: Gone Again is full of spare,
painfully exposed melodies and disciplined songs organized around sparkling
internal logic. In order to lead listeners to the revelations of "Ravens,"
"Wing" and "About a Boy," Smith knows that she must make every step clear.
Like many of her earlier works, Smith's new works are journeys. Tinged
with sadness and informed by the knowledge that time is precious, they're
the product of emotional blows that could easily have numbed Smith's spirit.
Yet the songs wind up sounding remarkably triumphant.
The closing "Farewell Reel," a delicate tune dedicated to her late
husband, is a perfect example of Smith's determination to struggle onward.
Accompanying herself with acoustic-guitar chords Fred taught her shortly
before he died, Smith looks at her suddenly altered life and decides that
things will somehow work out.
"We're only given as much as the heart can endure," she declares
philosophically, sounding like an artist ready for the next challenge.
Copyright © Tom Moon 1996
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