Editorial Reviews Music Review:
Music Review
Beethoven: String Quartet No. 7 "Rasumovsky"; Schubert: String Quartet No. 8
Beethoven: Complete Music for Flute
Music: Natural Blues [CD-single]
California [CD-single] [Import]
Birth of Alternative Rock, Vol. 2
Books [CD-single] [Enhanced] [EP]
BET: Best of Rap City [Explicit Lyrics]
Amazon.com
Patti Smith's fourth album since her 1988 comeback vehicle Dream of Life finds the plugged-in poetess looking outward after the extended period of introspection that followed the death of her husband, Fred "Sonic" Smith. The scathing eight-minute-plus "Strange Messengers" illustrates Smith's renewed interest in the world around her, as the streetwise New Yorker turned Midwestern suburbanite rails at crackheads ("That's how you repay your ancestors?"). Working with producer Gil Norton (Foo Fighters, Pixies) and fronting a quartet built around longtime lieutenants Lenny Kaye and Jay Dee Daugherty, Smith's music harkens back to the commercial apex of New Wave; indeed, "Gone Pie" sounds like the singer sitting in with Blondie. In fact, Gung Ho as a whole feels like the album the high-priestess of punk didn't make in the early '80s, a time when she was laying low and a number of artists inspired by her visionary early works were racking up MTV and modern-rock airtime. Gung Ho is somewhat muddled in execution, but then again, so are the times. --Steven Stolder