Amazon.co.uk Review
Poet, punk and priestess--Patti Smith is still all of these, yet much more on
Trampin', which ranges from protest songs to hopeful hymns. Though the disc opens with an exuberant exhortation to "discard your Sunday shoes" ("Jubilee") and concludes with a quiet gospel standard, in between Smith's journey to find heaven on Earth is rocky. She calls on Ghandi, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, and the poet William Blake for aid. She chants to rebuild a "Peaceable Kingdom," then whips around and unleashes the furious 12-minute fireball of "Radio Baghdad", a jagged,
Zeppelin-esque epic that recalls her 1975 debut,
Horses. Her band, featuring longtime guitarist Lenny Kaye, is in superlative form, intertwining hypnotic leads on "Cartwheels", dropping a mournful surf-tinged solo into "Mother Rose". Marked by both its simplicity and ambition,
Trampin' confirms that Smith remains a quintessential American artist, every inch the equal of
Springsteen,
Dylan or
Lou Reed.
--Kurt B Reighley
Album Description
Patti Smith's ninth album,
Trampin', features 10 new Smith songs along with a cover of the Marian Anderson track that the album's named after.
Trampin' features the band that has backed Smith since 1996, though guitarist Lenny Kaye and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty have been playing with her since her 1975 classic
Horses.
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