Hot Wave

Rip It Up, Issue 23, 1 June 1979, Page 11

Hot Wave

John Malloy

Patti Smith Group Wave Arista . Patti Smith’s latest album presents more of the contradictions and ambiguities that surround her.-At times she is brilliant, one of the most exciting artists in rock'n'roll, and at other times she can be embarrassingly naive, a terminal romantic. .With Wave, she consolidates the work she put in with Easter, her first commercially acceptable album. Her singing is better than ever, her songs are stronger musically, and her band plays like one mother of a rock band. Todd Rundgren’s production augments the songs without overpowering them, allowing the band’s own wall of sound ,to dominate. Whereas Springsteen's band on Darkness On The Edge Of Town sounds like the sound was pumped up larger than life, the PSG sound like they might sound live; loud, arrogant, devastating.

Every time you play this album the songs get better. "Dancing Barefoot" is a celebration of sexual/spiritual ectasy, a theme that recurs throughout her poems and songs. I’m dancing barefoot Heading for a spin Some strange music draws me in Makes me come on Like some heroin "Revenge” is about just that: Patti’s vocals peak on a chorus that is a howl for blood, with Lenny Kaye’s guitar co-starring as the scream of an insane axe-murderer. “Citizen Ship” refers to those who fled Czechoslovakia in 1968 (among them bassist Ivan Krai) and at the. same time makes a statement about the rights and identity of the individuals directly affected by political trauma. Citizen ship we got memories Citizen ship we got pain Citizen ship we got identity A name But the same romanticism that gives her best stuff a passionate intensity can put her right over the top on her worst. Wave has two examples of this. The first is "Hymn”, which features Patti singing in a ittle girl voice to autoharp accompaniment. The song is so cute that if she’s for real, its kitsch, and if she’s not, its hard to see why she bothered. The second is "Wave”, an imaginary conversation with Pope Jean Paul I, in which she sounds like an awkward adolescent, dumb and coy. I have to lift the needle every time it comes around, so its fortunate that its the last track on side two. There you have it; New York poet and punk rocker makes good/bad/superb. You can bet she’s going to be around long after disco's dead. Meanwhile, Wave is going to be hot on my playlist for a long time. Flawed brilliance.