Music

It’s surely no accident that in the same year Patti Smith is inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, she releases her first covers album. The iconic punk proselytiser and poet of piss and thunder has recorded other artists’ songs before – most famously ‘Gloria’ (by Them) and The Byrds’ ‘So You Want To Be (A Rock ’n’ Roll Star)’, but also Hendrix’s ‘Hey Joe’ and Prince’s ‘When Doves Cry’ – but an entire covers LP is something else again. Far from providing a lazy interlude, it offers a serious challenge – how to reprise the modern classic without either erasing the character of the original or simply replicating it? Essentially a metacritical exercise, the oft-dismissed cover can bestow gravitas on an artist, but, after racking up 30-odd years in the business (minus an almost-entirely fallow decade up to 1996), releasing proto-punk landmark ‘Horses’, acting as muse to Robert Mapplethorpe and as creative mother to artists as diverse as Chrissie Hynde and Courtney Love, Patti Smith already has gravitas. In spades.

‘Twelve’, then, offers a dozen covers: several stone-cold neo-classics that complement Smith’s place in the rock pantheon, her aesthetic profile and vocal pitch (‘Are You Experienced?’, ‘Helpless’, ‘Gimme Shelter’ and ‘White Rabbit’); a couple of less likely choices that Smith and band make entirely their own (the banjo- and fiddle-powered, spoken-word-spiked ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, ‘Pastime Paradise’ – a poetic reinvention of the Stevie Wonder song); and one underwhelming (vocals aside), bluesy sprawl which sounds like the kind of thing that regularly plays on ‘Later… With Jools Holland’. That’s ‘Soul Kitchen’ and you can blame The Doors. Smith’s long-time guitarist Lenny Kaye is still on board and there are guest appearances by Flea, Tom Verlaine and banjo-playing playwright Sam Shepard, among others.

‘Twelve’ may not be all her own work, but Smith’s striking muse is very much in command. Clearly, there are some lights which never go out.