Customer Reviews

Twelve

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Patti's always had a way with cover songs. In the early days, she'd begin her gigs with the Velvet Underground's "We're Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together." She's always had a tendency towards wacky - I've seen her cover "Tomorrow" from Annie and "You Light Up My Life" in concerts. She's always paid homage to her musical influences - the Who's "My Generation", Manfred Mann's "5,4,3,2,1". Even Prince's "When Doves Cry". Not every cover song can be deconstructed & reinvented like "Gloria." That she pulled that off at all is a feat few would dare, little less succeed at.

I was looking forward to this set of cover songs just to see what was going on in Patti's mind. Her appreciation of rock music, heroes, and history is comprehensive. With Lenny Kaye at her side, a musical encyclopedia, it proves to be quite a collection.

Most of the criticism seems to center around the fact that she doesn't take the bait and tear the songs apart to reinvent them. While that critique is correct, in my opinion, it misses the point. There is a warmth, almost a reverence, to the collection of songs. There is true affection, and a personal connection, to each of these songs that makes Twelve unique in her canon. Never has Patti & Company sounded so relaxed, confident, and warm. There is none of her trademark urgency or stridence.

Instead, her voice shows a new maturity. When did Patti learn to sing? She practically croons Everybody Wants to Rule the World. Personally, I never much cared for the song, but find myself hitting replay for her version. Soul Kitchen has the same relaxed vibe - somehow it's much, much sexier with her singing the song than Jim Morrison's version. I also like the garbage truck story in the booklet about how it came to be included.

I'm glad that the connection between Grace Slick and Patti isn't just in my head. There actually IS a connection between these two maverick queens of rock & roll, these two non-R&B chick singers that stand alone amongst all the great women vocalists of rock. Patti's take on White Rabbit is wonderful - complete with feedback, spoken word poetry, and then the crisp bass & drum bolero.

Even more telling is the unplugged retake on Smells Like Teen Spirit. Truthfully, I never had a clue what Kurt Cobain was singing lyrically. Patti enunciates the lyrics (which are formidible.) I love the banjo, dulcimer, accoustic guitars and upright bass. The bass is the only thing that ties this version to the original. Outstanding!

Partime Paradise is also performed beautifully. I hadn't thought of that song in years, maybe even a decade. There are no out & out misses here. Just a couple where it would be impossible, by anybody, to improve upon the original - Gimme Shelter, The Boy in the Bubble, Are You Experienced?, Helpless, Changing of the Guards (OK, point well taken by the reviewer who mentioned the elimination of the background singers on Street Legal. But I've always felt Dylan is the best interpreter of Dylan - despite everybody's best efforts.)

There are also a couple that were pretty mediocre to begin with - Within You Without You, and Midnight Rider. Patti puts her stamp on them, and I find them evocative, but ultimately placeholders until she gets around to another song I like better.

As befitting a poet, it's mostly about the words and their power. Patti puts the emphasis on the lyrics with ALL the songs - she bites the liness out, enunciates, emphasizes, emotes. There are unexpected musical flourishes with clarinets, dulcimers, mandolins, banjos. This is what elevates the collection for me. With only a couple of exceptions, she feels no need to add her own lyrics or poetry. Considering her own talent in this area, her omission is telling.

Take it for what it is - a bedroom slippers, glass of cognac, late night CD of memories, reminders, and mile posts of one person's life in rock & roll. Who would make up your Twelve?

It is almost impossible to understand what tempted the original rock poetess, an icon, a heroine to put her reputation under the microscope with this album of twelve cover versions, with tracks by Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, the Stones and the Beatles among others.
If you love the sound of her voice, it is impossible to find the album entirely without merit, and on the plus side there are laid-back, rocky versions of the Doors' "Soul Kitchen" and the Allman Brothers' "Midnight Rider".
But does the world need to hear her take on Tears for Fears' "Everybody Wants to Rule the World"?
The interpretations make Smith's distinctive delivery sound like a parody of itself. Because her essence is missing, the album feels like a waste of her considerable talent.
Patti Smith doing old chestnuts from Tears For Fears and Paul Simon holds out no promise of magic.
However, there are joyful surprises here.
"Gimme Shelter is definitive Stones, "White Rabbit" the essence of psychedelia, and "Pastime Paradise" gorgeous beyond words.
With the help of that wonderful voice, still maturing, and a set of imaginative arrangements, Smith has reinvented all three and given us versions good enough to set beside the originals.
Best of all is a banjo and fiddle-driven romp through "Smells Like Teen Spirit" which reveals the splendour of that song in a different light. Seizing the moment, the rock poetess adds some sizzling words that Kurt Cobain would have been proud to call his own.

Fresh on the heels of her Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction and perplexing as ever (in her case a good thing), Patti Smith has released "Twelve," a collection of a dozen cover songs. The woman Rolling Stone dubbed "punk's priestess and poet laureate" finds a way to cite her influences, take advantage of her recent publicity and also toss listeners a bone until she releases the self-penned follow up to 2004's critically embraced "Trampin'."

In keeping with her defiantly androgynous image, Smith covers songs exclusively written by male songwriters (with the lone exception of Grace Slick's "White Rabbit"), never failing to put her own signature stamp on each. She is not the conventional singer, having gained acclaim for a performance style that lies somewhere in-between singing and shouting, but the selections she has chosen lend themselves to it extremely well.

For instance, she injects a welcome shot of momentum into the Rolling Stones' spirited "Gimme Shelter," while accenting Neil Young's "Helpless" with beauty, grace and intensity. She event tips her hat to Bob Dylan in covering his underrated "Changing of the Guards," a single from his 1978 LP "Street Legal" that failed to make the Billboard charts. Her spirited, toned down delivery invokes a whole new level of appreciation of Dylan's words while also showcasing her astute empathy of them - this is not just any old cover.

The most surprising aspect of "Twelve," though, is Smith's more contemporary choices. Her flavorful reading of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," which hit #1 on the pop charts for Tears For Fears back in 1985, trades in the pathos of the original for a more factual delivery in which the meaning of the lyrics emerges more clearly. She even adds some of her own poetry to her understated but effective take on Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit."

Elsewhere, Jefferson Airplane's classic "White Rabbit" and "Within You, Without You" by The Beatles work fine for Smith, although different covers from those bands might have proved more interesting. Still, other covers from the likes of Paul Simon, Jimi Hendrix and The Doors are effervescent, rewarding listens. The closing duo of "Midnight Rider" (The Allman Brothers Band) and "Pastime Paradise" (Stevie Wonder) concludes the album on a high note.

It may be a stopgap release, but Smith has never been one to release music that wasn't worth a second glance, and this time is no different. With an interesting mix of substantial, lyric-driven material she can sink her teeth into, she delivers another fine record and reminds listeners why she deserves her recent accolade.

An exclusive cover of R.E.M's "Everybody Hurts" is available at Target.

Anytime an artist of this stature releases a "covers" record...especially one so thoughtfully put together and skillfully played as this one...it's hardly a "wasted opportunity" as someone here has already termed it.

In this case, it's a cause for celebration.

Twelve songs...twelve chapters in musical history that are not only re-imagined here by Patti and her band, but brought to new life with the care and class that she brings to all her recordings.

Lenny Kaye has never sounded so clean...part of this has to do with the superb production and part of it has to do with the restraint he brings to the project.

Tony Shanahan is a monster on bass, and the bass is mixed beautifully on this record, as are Jay Dee Daugherty's drums. Everything is just pure and melodic.

And then there's Patti.

Thank god for Patti Smith.

Between her and her children, Jesse and Jackson, who contribute subtly and in fine fashion, and the various guests...Flea, Rich Robinson, Sam Shepard, etc...the record comes off sounding like a labour of love that already has me salivating for TWELVE 2.

There's not a wrong note in the batch and, to these ears right now, the Standouts among an album of standouts, are The Beatles' WITHIN YOU WITHOUT YOU and Stevie Wonders' PASTTIME PARADISE.


I sat and listened to this twice last night (the night of release) and, although I've been in Patti's corner since 1975 and HORSES...as a matter of fact, EASTER (to me) is the second greatest rock album ever recorded, just a half-step behind BORN TO RUN...I felt that I was being re-introduced to the woman again, through this stellar collection of other artists songs, and, as then, I loved what I heard. This is an artist who spoke to me thirty two years ago, clearly and without pretension, and continues to do so.

With TWELVE, I hear you as clearly as I did in 1975 Patti, and your music...be it from your pen or another's...continues to move me, shake me, and take me places very few artists can take me.

Congratulations on a beautiful record and one that takes an honored place in my collection.

This is not really a review of Patti's new album, which I admit must sound strange. I agree with the reviewers who say that the album is somewhat flat. I agree that the choice of songs she chose to cover is puzzling. But then I saw Patti in concert. Everything became clear as light. In performance, the relevance of songs like "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" and "Gimmee Shelter" was obvious. Patti doesn't see or hear like the average music fan. The lyrics and tone of a song take on different meanings in her world. In concert, at least, she communicates her interpretation perfectly. This should have been a live album. In concert you can hear and see Patti transform "Are you Experienced?" into a true psychedelic event that recalls Jimi's original intent. "Gimme Shelter" howls with menace. She didn't perform every song from 12 in concert, but the selections she did perform bristled with relevance. A lot of thought went into this album. Too bad the effort seems a little flat. Like I said, it should have been a live album.

What I am consistently drawn to in these song performances by Patti and her group are the openess of the arrangements and her better than ever beautiful voice. I have always enjoyed her voice in poetic balladic grace, political edge, poigancy and rock-n-roll rebellion. But, there is something truly enraptured in her love for this handful of songs. Great anyway and continued greatness carried by this delivery. I'm enjoying this record alot and it is a finely tuned covers collection until her muse brings her another original record. My suggestion, buy it, enjoy it and don't over analyze it.

So the advance buzz about this record was that it's "self-indulgent, bland, pointless," blah blah blah -- Patti doing some kind of karaoke act circa 1970. But hey, first of all, there wasn't even any karaoke back in 1970 so that only means it's just one more thing that the great Ms. Smith has invented in her lustrous lifetime.

Let's say you were there in the 60s and early 70s -- that phenomenal era when rock music was not only the hottest thing on the planet, it was also a force for revolutionary change. The S.D.S. listened to the MC5 before going out and staging their demonstrations. Is anyone going out and peace-marching after listening to the Living Things' "Bom Bom Bom?" Maybe you just can't change history -- I mean, look at all the good it did us to expose Watergate.

Here's some history. In the beginning was the word and the word was rock. Freedom. Rebellion. We've gotten away from it. Patti Smith may be understandably miffed that the music she helped to create has lost so much of its soul. I would be miffed about it too. "Here," she seems to be saying, "here, children -- here is how we did it." It blows my mind that in 1971 the Stones were getting paid millions of dollars to write and play songs as irreverent and radical as "Dead Flowers." You could really tell the truth back then. Today's irreverent, radical musicians are languishing in basements, unheard and unsung, or castrated on MTV, which is now all about looking like an actor/model rather than telling the truth or sounding like a real musician anyway. But who doesn't know that?

And what a great idea it was to cover "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," by the way. Patti takes it out of that robotic beat that marked so many songs from the 80s and reveals its lyric and melody for what it always was -- a simple beautiful folk song for the ages.

Twelve. O'clock. Midnight. The 25th hour. Decision time. D-day. In the early 70s, when Smith flipped "Gloria" on her head, she was shaking up the rearguard of "old-fashioned" rock, but also paying tribute to its garage-fueled energies. Today it's considered cool, of course, to remix and "contemporize" old songs. Okay, so maybe my bandana's wrapped a bit too tight. But what happens if you hate the contemporary moment? What if you think 2007 is a terrible awful moment on this planet (for human life in general as well as for rock and roll)? Then it makes no sense to want to shake up the old -- you want to bring it back whole, you want to throw it down on the table like the last ace the wild card up your sleeve, you want to build a moveable shrine to its soul. And that's exactly what Patti has done here. The gospel according to Saint Patti as only she could tell it.

I love you Patti. Long may you wave.

Patti Smith is a storyteller period and her interpretation of these songs is pure patti smith and while some have expressed their displeasure with her doing covers, I say let the woman do as she wants, she's 60 years old and keeps getting better with age. My key tracks are EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD, WITHIN YOU WITHOUT YOU and WHITE RABBIT. All hail the Godmother of Punk.

As an old but still kickin' hippie product of the early 70's this amalgam of titles really appealed to me. Patti does a really fine job with lots of fun and enjoyment evident in the performances. Buy it. It's a great series of songs, and yes, there's plenty of passion, artistry, etc. It's not at all bland or whatever the other reviewers have said. Maybe you just have to be a hippie to appreciate it--it's GROOVY!!

Reviewers who have criticized "Twelve" as uneven, or random, or not what they expected are missing the point. Patti Smith clearly experimented on the album -- when she hits you cannot get any better. I defy you to find a cover of the Beatles' "Within You Without You" that is as simple, powerful and different. The CD is worth the price alone for that song, and her covers of "Gimme Shelter" and Dylan's "Changing of the Guard" are mezmerizing. I have probably listened to the last two songs 50 times.

And that voice -- incredible phrasing, hauntingly beautiful.

So yes, when she misses the mark, the song might not work, but, honestly, when she hits on a song, it's hard to imagine it being done any better.