Camden New Journal - Music: Patti Smith

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The Review - MUSIC - grooves with CHARLOTTE CHAMBERS
Published: 24 May 2007

Patti rocks the Roundhouse

REVIEW: PATTI SMITH
ROUNDHOUSE

POETESS and self-described pop star Patti Smith took a trip to the British Museum en route to play the Roundhouse for the first time since 1976 on Thursday night.
It made her puke, she claimed, a vomit of English baked beans; a hill of beans that she was once accused of not amounting to, beans that reminded her of pills, pills to make you larger, pills to make you small – and we were into Jefferson Airplane’s White Rabbit.
Smith’s gangling frame jerked on the stage and her voice coaxed, cajoled and raged with an energy that did not relent throughout her two-hour set.
Smith’s latest album, Twelve, consists of cover versions from Nirvana to Tears for Fears, but with its centre of gravity planted firmly in the 60s.
Having deadpanned Everybody Wants to Rule the World and stormed Smells Like Teen Spirit, Smith answered the question hanging in the air: why covers?
Was she lacking inspiration, she asked on our behalf, or merely steamrollered by her record company?
Apparently not. “I did it,” she said, “because I wanted to.”

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