Patti Smith Group, Easter
Tortured and anthemic, Smith's most commercial album is anything but a sellout
If only by dint of containing the Springsteen collab "Because the Night," her only Top 10 hit, Easter is Patti Smith's most commercial album, but it's hardly a sellout. The musical backing by her longtime trio of Lenny Kaye, Ivan Kral and Jay Dee Daugherty (with Bruce Brody in for Richard Sohl on keys) is almost anthemic at times, full of ringing power chords and massive snare hits, but Smith's lyrics are as dark and complex as those on Horses, maybe more so.
Not surprisingly given its title, the album is shot through with references to death and resurrection (perhaps most tangibly on "Ghost Dance"). "Privilege (Set Me Free)" closes with a snippet of Psalm 23.
Smith's embrace of Christian themes is ecstatic and tortured rather than dogmatic. She includes Jesus Christ along with Jimi Hendrix and Jackson Pollack in the roll call of social outcasts in "Rock n Roll Nigger," a song more radical for its mixture of spoken-word poetry and all-out rock than its questionable attempt to rework racial epithets.
Smith is so often discussed as a poet that her singing sometimes gets second billing, but she was never in better voice than here, shifting from a raspy snarl to a mournful wail. That "Because the Night" isn't bad, either.
