Thursday, May 24, 2007

Review: Patti Smith: Twelve

My Patti Smith review can be found (click here) on treblezine.com



Patti Smith
Twelve
Columbia
2007

When I think of the ideal cover version, one song that comes to mind is Patti Smith and her take on Them's "Gloria." Those opening lines from her debut album "Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine…" was her way of calling to the world saying "I am woman, hear me roar." And for a generation she has stood up as a poet, rocker, activist and artist with a voice that's equally powerful sexy and inspiring.

Every time I hear Patti's voice I think of a former novia, Heather. I met her in New Orleans, and we were best friends for months before we got together. She single-handedly re-introduced me into Patti Smith when I was in my own poet/social activist phase in my life. Heather was a die-hard Patti fan and sees Smith live every time she plays in New York. Even if Smith plays a four night stand, Heather and her sister are there every night. When ever I hear one of Patti's songs I think of her and the way she was too shy to sing out loud because Heather was afraid of sharing her singing voice, but that was okay, because Patti not only sang for her but she sings for all of us.

On Smith's new album Twelve, She not only sings for us but she handpicks some of her favorite songs and reinterprets them with her unique power and glory. She starts off by taking on one of America's giants and the best guitarist that ever lived, Jimi Hendrix. Patti singing "Are you Experienced" is the perfect introduction to Twelve. Lenny Kaye's slow chord procession turns Jimi's song into a bluesy tribute to Hendrix. I like the way she adds her own poetic scat calls in between Jimi's familiar lyrics. Patti takes over this song like a poetic priestess as she recaptures the spirit of the sixties on her soulful and tripped out version of this Hendrix classic.

Patti follows "Experienced" with a unique choice by covering Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World." Smith and her band do a straightforward, traditional version of this Roland Orzabal composition, and this is probably one of the only missteps on this stellar record. I would have loved it if Patti would have turned this '80s pop treasure into a post modern acoustic classic. The only part of this song that stands out is Lenny's cool guitar riffs before the final coda. "Helpless" follows and Patti slows it down with a beautiful interpretation of this Neil Young gem. This version is akin to the Ryan Adams/Gillian Welch take that I so adore. I love how sweet Patti's voice sounds as she croons like a chanteuse stranded by the side of the road serenading the stars.

Patti and her band turn the Stones' "Gimmie Shelter" into the 21st anthem that is needed in these turbulent and violent times that echo the era in which the song was born. This track is my personal favorite on the collection. With Kaye's revolutionary riffs and Smith's howling vocals, this is Patti's urging to the masses to rise up for our disappearing rights and fight for our country that we love and believe in. As she sings, "it's just a shout away," we believe her. It makes me want to run into the streets with my brothers and sisters. That's the power of Patti.

Next comes, a fitting tribute to former Beatles legend George Harrison on "Within You Without You." Ever since, the Love compilation came out, I can't hear this song without also hearing the music of "Tomorrow Never Knows" in the background. It starts off with an acoustic version mixed with some sweet percussion and piano keys instead of the sitars that float through the original. Patti does her best to take it back and succeeds with a version that even Harrison would not only approve of, but might even love from above. Patti Smith's take on "White Rabbit" begins with an In Excelsis Deo type of introduction. I love the way that the drum fills sound like one of the three member revolutionary war marchers pounding with their sticks instead of announcing the arrival of an army, these drums signal the coming of Patti Smith and her timeless reading that rivals Grace Slick's vocals in the original.

If you're a true Patti fan than you know that Smith loves herself some Doors. Patti and her band put the "Soul" in Morrison's "kitchen" in this sweet version of song from the debut album from The Doors. I would have preferred Patti include an acoustic cover of "Crystal Ship." You can find an extraordinary live cover of that one on the net. Search for it, you will thank me for this. One of the most original covers on Twelve has to be the banjo flavored strumming of Nirvana's "Smells like Teen Spirit." I love the fact that this version sounds nothing like the original. I so got sick of this song as it became the slacker anthem for the Grunge generation. Patti makes this Cobain classic her very own. I believe that Smith's version is even better than the original. I adore the violin strings playing throughout as Patti shares some more of her poetic improvisations before the final chorus as the band builds up to this climax. I imagine Cobain smiling from the Heavens hearing Patti's take on his most infamous song. She did Kurt and Nirvana proud on this song.

Twelve is an amazing album, offering interpretations of works from a plethora of artists who have helped shaped the voice and spirit of one of our generation's everlasting artists. I think it's fitting, for Patti Smith has inspired countless bands including R.E.M. and The Smiths, who named their band in her honor. I love Patti because she's brave and inspires me with her words in both politics and poetry.

Even though Twelve is a triumph, I have one request of Patti. I would love for her to release a box set of live shows, like the Stages collection that Hendrix estate released in the 1990s. Why you ask? Unless you have seen Patti live you're only getting half of the experience. Patti in concert is the real thing. I remember when I first heard this amazing live version of "Gloria." I am not talking about the one we all know from her brilliant debut Horses, there's another version that blows that one out of the hemisphere. The one I am talking about is from a live show sometime in the '70s that has just Patti and features the amazing guitar stylings of one Lenny Kaye. This version of "Gloria," that I am writing about, is unavailable anywhere on any official release, and is the best version of "Gloria" ever captured on tape. Better than Van Morrison or The Doors. I love the way Patti comes alive as she sings this song with only a guitar as her guide. It's like a rock orgasm coming to life. And at the end all you want is a cigarette and to press play and relive it all over again.

Adrian Ernesto Cepeda
05.24.2007

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Best Song Ever: Review: Bjork/Sugarcubes "Birthday"

My Bjork/Sugarcubes song review can be found (click here) on treblezine.com



"Birthday"
Sugarcubes
Life's Too Good
Elektra
1988

The Sugarcubes' "Birthday" is the quintessential Björk single. It has all of her trademark qualities, her sexy shriek, the vivid imagery and otherworldly lyrics that we have come to know and love. "Birthday" is the song that started it all, the one that introduced a tiny Icelandic chanteuse to the world. I fell in love with her and her orgasmic howl when I first saw the video on MTV's 120 Minutes.

Even though I feel Homogenic is Björk's best album as a whole, "Birthday" will always be my favorite individual song. The thing is, besides The Smiths "Unhappy Birthday," Björk created one of the most original songs to relate to one's birthday. The lyrics are filled with childhood wonder and imagination through the eyes of a youngster looking forward to that joyous day, so it seems anyhow. I love the little descriptions of what the child's eccentric hobbies as she sings—"Thread worms on a string/ keeps spiders in her pockets/ collects fly-wings in a jar/ scrubs horse-flies and pinches them on a line." I feel like we know this character, she's an outsider and a loner who has only one friend in the world who she goes to visit and they listen to the weather. This is the magic of Björk her words and her voice. She creates these worlds with these characters that we all can relate to.

But towards the end of the song "Birthday" takes this ominous turn.

"Today is a birthday
They're smoking cigars,
He's got a chain of flowers,
And sews a bird in her knickers,

They're smoking cigars,
They lie in the bathtub,
A chain of flowers
."

To me, it sounds more like a girl literally coming of age with this romantic crush on an eccentric hippie man living next door. I don't get the impression of any wrong doing but "Birthday" ends sort of vague. (It actually sounds like Bjork is singing "they're smoking seagulls" instead of cigars which, I prefer, and would have worked with the raven and bird imagery in the coda of the song.)

It turns out that it is the old man's birthday and not the little girl's. I guess the confusion I find is in the meaning of the last five lines. What does chain of flowers mean? What exactly is sewing a bird on her knickers? But, Björk has said about the song— "When I was a kid, all old men that influenced me sort of erotically, without doing anything, really. Men at 50 and stuff like that. But, you know, without doing anything ... so that's the feeling."

This is the power of her sound and lyrical vision. Björk is not afraid to tackle subjects that most artists wouldn't dare attempt to sing about. This merely drives home my point that "Birthday" is her best song. From the start, Björk is not singing about ordinary love she's challenging us with lyrics and melodies that at first might seem rosy, but after further exploration we realize have serious thorns in them. And the thorns are something that Björk loves writing and howling about. We have enough singers who croon about the roses, Björk loves to sing about the other side of life and love, the darkness, the confusion and the doubt we all may feel as we trip around life searching for the perfect beat to call our own.

"Birthday" has a Velvet Underground kind of vibe that Lou Reed would have loved. Unlike most popular singers, Björk is not one to conform to any one specific style or theme. She creates innovative worlds with her trademark voice and ever evolving chameleonic style; there is nothing this artist cannot do. Björk is our generation's Bowie, but, you know, female.

"Birthday" was only the beginning and is the ideal place to start for the novice Björk fan in your life. Now we have a canon of songs and albums to guide us on our journey. Listen to the beauty and the howl, and let her in. You will be challenged and forever changed.

Adrian Ernesto Cepeda
2007

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

Review: Tori Amos: American Doll Posse

my Tori Amos review can be found on treblezine.com

Tori Amos
American Doll Posse
Epic
2007

I remember being just out of college, working at a Borders in San Antonio, and there were a whole bunch of us Toriphiles working together. Tori was coming to town for her Choirgirl Hotel tour, so our store had come up with a writing contest, for which we employees were ineligible, and the winner would receive two tickets to the show. Our prizes for being judges were personally autographed pictures of Tori Amos. Mine was a picture of Tori wearing this freaked out costume over this abstract art-like bed. One of my co-workers saw the pictures and said. "She must not have that many friends…" "Why?" I responded. "Because a real friend wouldn't let her wear that or go out in an outfit like that."

That was funny but very poignant when it comes to artists who have too much creative control. I believe that some of the best artists surround themselves with yes men and women who are so relieved to be in the artist's inner circle that they are afraid to reflect some much needed constructive criticism when needed to reel in their egos on record, on stage or on the silver screen. Who's to say if great artists and thespians like Brando and even Michael Jackson would have been like if they had bullshit detectors in their professional posses? Worse yet, what happens to artists is when they become stars they lose touch with their audiences. At the beginning of their careers they seem to be in touch with their fans, being starving artists, themselves, but when they climb to the top some seem to lose that artistic hunger.

This brings me back to Tori Amos and her new album American Girl Posse. Tori combats this creative struggle by creating lyrical personas to reflect some of her most extraordinary and explosive songs in recent memory. The characters she uses are the sensual and Aphrodite-esque Santa; the documentarian with a revolutionary spirit Isabel; the eccentric artist Clyde searching for souls of people underneath their masks; Pip, the Glam rocker who resembles the dark side of Amos back in her days of Y Kant Tori Read. And then there's Tori herself who as a while has created her most challenging and most convoluted record since Boys for Pele. There are some exciting and excellent songs, and yet there are some of her most frustrating missteps committed to vinyl.

One of my favorite tracks finds Isabel singing about "The Madness of King George" on her anti-Bush song, "Yo George." I have lost interest in these, now cliché, Bush bashing songs that been released by everyone from Neil Young to Bright Eyes. But Isabel's song is a simple little piano ditty without anger, just a soft and honest vocal using her words to voice her displeasure of our least popular President in history. The first track "Big Wheel" is a killer song, one of my favorites on the album, sung sexily by Amos. It has a kind of country-meets-rock sound, with hints of a waltz thrown in with her sultry lyrics, "I'm an M-I-L-F don't you forget." It rocks and is one that will linger in your subconscious long after Posse has ended.

Isabel strikes back at "Mr. Bad Man" in another stellar track just as sweet as "Yo George" with a little more syrup on top. It's catchier, but just as memorable as she sings "But everyday I know that I may just be closer to the sea of frozen words that even soldiers would lay down their swords for." Isabel's wish is that her words will spark a revolution in the heads and hearts of the armed and the powerful everywhere. Clyde sings "Girl Disappearing" with stirring strings floating all the way through this beautiful song that would have fit perfectly on Under the Pink. She sings "the girl's right in front of me, this girl's disappearing to some secret prison."

I also love Santa's "Secret Spell," which is the best song R.E.M. never recorded. You can practically hear Michael Stipe singing this song with Mike Mills's backing harmonies and Peter Buck jamming his riffs on this song. Which leaves me wondering why didn't Santa/Tori ask Stipe to sing/duet on this amazing song that has hit single written all over it? And by the way, whatever happened to the Amos/Stipe collaboration "It Might Hurt a Bit," originally scheduled for release way back for the Don Juan Demarco soundtrack? Will we this unreleased gem ever be set free for all Tori-philes to relish in its magic and beauty?

Oh well, where was I? Back to the Posse…

Isabel's my favorite Tori persona on Posse, as she has the most memorable tracks and this little one, "Devils and Gods" might just be the best one of the album. I call this Tori's ode to her childhood muse and idol Robert Plant. It's sort of her very own personalized version of Led Zep's "Battle of Evermore." Short, haunting and brilliant, it appears like a lingering, lyrical apparition that inspires and gives one the chills.

Of Tori's many new personalities, Pip is a big disappointment for me; "Teenage Hustling" and "Fat Slut" bring the album down and remind me of outtakes from Y Kant Tori Read. It's hard to take hair metal riffs on a Tori song, which is most of what you hear on the backing tracks of the Pip-fronted tracks. The only exception is the powerful anthem "Body and Soul." I love Pip's `hear me roar' vocal as she sings "In my temple boy be warned violence doesn't have a home now but ecstasy that's as pure as a woman's gold." Using her seductive love instead of religion to cure the world's evil is a very enticing idea that has resonance outside the confines of this amazing recording.

Posse ends with a bang, starting with the Italian Mandolin riffs on Pip's Godfather-esque "Velvet Revolution." Then there's Isabel, my girl, singing "Is there a way out of this, if there is a way I don't see it?" on her anti-Iraqi war song "Dark Side of the Sun." Pip redeems herself with an eerie track "Smokey Joe" which would find a home inside of my favorite Tori album From The Choirgirl Hotel. She sings about being in an abusive relationship, and when Smokey Joe calls she's afraid of not picking up and letting him in again. Tori sings the inevitable question that one in this unhealthy love affair asks, "I did not ask for this/ `Oh but Love yes you did.'"

There is so much in American Girl Posse that it can be exhausting, but the journey inside the many personas of Tori Amos is well worth it. There's a bit too much filler on here, mostly by Pip, and some of her tracks would have fit well as her own EP or even as b-sides. Nonetheless, it's nice to hear the voice of the chanteuse that won our hearts long ago. That voice of power and beauty brings me back to the day I finally met Tori, when I lived in New Orleans. I was on my way to work and I saw her doing a photo shoot in front of my favorite used record store, Magic Bus. I ran into my boss's office and begged him for his camera. I went back to the street, got my nerve and asked Tori if I could take a picture. As I was about to snap a photo, she sweetly asked me—"Would you like to take a picture with me?" So now I have a cool photo of me and Tori Amos. What was she like, you ask? As I listen to Posse, I feel like she embodied all of these characters rolled into one, very eccentric and intense, but also a very kind soul.

Adrian Ernesto Cepeda
05.09.2007