Covers albums can be very much a hit or a miss so I was interested to see which camp Patti Smith fell into with her 2007 album Twelve on Columbia records.
You will recognise most of the songs on the album which are mainly from 60s artists who influenced her and by and large she covers them faithfully . It was released to very much mixed reviews. Pitchfork are particularly scathing calling it shockingly conservative and predicable and giving it a mark of 2.7 (not sure if that is out of 5 or 10!)
The Guardian is more genrous giving it 4 out of 5 while acknowledging that there are few radical reworkings. Chris Jones on Amazon writes that it is in turns revalatory, misjudged and evin, in places, banal.He (or is it she?) concludes that it may remain an oddity in her canon, destined for selective downloading rather than a fully-formed experience.
I would go along with that.It is interesting to hear them in her unique almost spoken voice but there is nothing special there
That Pitchfork rating of 2.7 is quite obviously out of 100.
ReplyDeleteYou may well be right
DeleteI'm usually a sucker for a cover version album, but I've managed to resist temptation for the past 15 years. I think her 2001 version of Prince's When Doves Cry on the compilation Land was enough of a red flag for me.
ReplyDeleteNeither of the two songs featured here were offensive to my hear but I agree, nothing special. I'll keep avoiding the album, I think!
I quite like those 2 tracks. You can lend me it back so I can listen to the rest :-)
ReplyDeleteWill do
Delete