Tonight Matthew I'm Going To Be...................


The set list reads: Are You Experienced, Everybody Wants To Rule The World, Helpless, Gimme Shelter, Within You Without You, White Rabbit, Changing Of The Guards, Boy In The Bubble, Soul Kitchen, Smells Like Teen Spirit, Midnight Rider, Pastime Paradise.

Twelve songs, written by artists as diverse as Kurt Cobain, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Wonder, have been given the covers treatment by Patti Smith. Smith who took apart and then put back together 'Gloria' by Van Morrison and 'My Generation' by The Who as well as recording the definitive version of Springsteen's 'Because The Night', has released the album Twelve as a stop gap between studio albums. It also comes on the back of her induction into the Rock n' roll hall of fame.

Smith is a musical icon, if she had given up recording after her first album there would be websites devoted to speculation as to whether or not she would ever be coming back.

She has chosen a wide range of songs on which to try out a wide range of treatments. She's been clever in her choice of songs mixing those songs which would be regarded as classics by most people with a passing interest in popular music of the past forty years (Are You Experienced?, White Rabbit Gimme Shelter, Smells Like Teen Spirit, with versions of what could be described as fan's favourites (Helpless, Midnight Rider) and a couple of populist choices (Everybody wants to Rule The World, Boy in the Bubble).

The big question with an album of covers must always be, do they offer anything new in the way of interpretation? Well yes and no. Are you Experienced is very good but then you have to endure Everybody Wants to Rule The World, Helpless and Gimme Shelter which she sings with all the enthusiasm of a poorly paid cabaret artists singing for her supper down the local chicken in a basket dive. Not so much helpless as hopeless. Within In You Without You isn't much better and then comes White Rabbit. White Rabbit is Grace Slick's song and Patti Smith sings it so flat you can't decide whether she's playing it straight or for laughs.

All is not lost however, just when you wondered whether or not it was safe to peer from behind the cushion she comes up with Changing of The Guards and you forgive all that has gone before. It's only a short respite though before she launches into Boy In A Bubble and you almost feel like shooting Paul Simon again for recording in apartheid era South Africa. Soul Kitchen sounds more like Soulless Kitchen and then comes the iconic song of the early nineties.

Smells Like Teen Spirit sounds poignant but not plaintive as it did when sung by Kurt Cobain, picture a woman in her fifties rocking back and forth on the porch of her shack, banjo in hand and you have a reworking of a true classic that actually sounds great, in the middle she goes off on her riff that actually sounds like Michael Stipe at his magisterial best circa the Green album or even Patti Smith in her early years. The album rounds off with her versions of a Duanne Allman song and one by Stevie Wonder.

I make that three out of twelve, 25% or 1 star out of five.