REVIEW: Patti Smith, Gung Ho (Arista)
- Don Share
More Ho than Gung (literally), Patti Smith's new album is a fascinating new step in her quarter-century career. Lovingly, almost slickly produced, Gung Ho is her most polished album to date, but she's compromised nothing. From an 11-minute epic about Vietnamese hero Ho Chi Minh, to a strident song-poem chastising African-Americans whose crack use sends their ancestors' dreams up in smoke, Gung Ho shows that Smith's ardor and commitment remain undimmed.
The music is much affected by the presence of boyfriend/guitarist, 20-something Oliver Ray, whose sound burnishes an already rich band consisting of stalwarts Lenny Kaye, Jay Dee Daugherty, and Tony Shanahan. But Gung Ho is also given a tremendous boost on its most remarkable song, "Persusasion," by astonishing guitar work from Smith's young son, Jackson, who has clearly inherited chops from his dad, the late Fred "Sonic" Smith. In fact, Jackson's guest appearance is far more notable than those by Michael Stipe and Grant Hart, which are rather tossed-in.
The single, "Glitter In Their Eyes," successfully updates Smith's sound without spoiling her vitriol, which in this case takes aim at the WTO and Disney. Easy targets, maybe, but you can't say that about the long Ho song, or "New Party," which is about having a political party not a millennium party for our new century. The lyrics of these last two songs reveal that Smith has been studying American history and its founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, but as a kind of revisionist: she advocates thinking and warm humanism, implicitly opposed to, say, George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism."
It's no surprise that Patti Smith has kept her politics honed sharp, but the music here is surprising. From the near-Blue Oyster Cult riffs of "Gone Pie" to the beautiful ballad, "China Bird," to the Mother Theresa-inspired "One Voice," there's a deely thoughtful dimension to her sound which was hinted at in recent albums, but is completely realized here. Never has Smith sounded so confidently diverse: "Libbies Song" could even pass for a Carter Family front-porch classic. Some will find all this disconcerting, but Smith has not abandoned, only developed her "Horses"-era work.
Most moving of all, Gung Ho is also a tribute to her father, whose photograph as a young man in military gear - and in a pose like that of his daughter on her first album - graces the album cover. This music is an embodiment not just of her ideals, and Ho's, but his: it celebrates democrats and warriors in heart and soul, and is both stirring and slogan-free.
