She'll never open an album as dramatically as she did with "Horses" who will? but the raucous "Jubilee" makes a pretty damn good start. With what sounds like Neil Young's Crazy Horse backing her (actually stalwarts Lenny Kaye and Jay Dee Daugerty plus Tony Shanahan and Oliver Ray) Patti Smith has rarely sounded better since that epochal 1975 debut.
"Trampin'" is an album driven by a righteous anger but an anger drawing hope over despair. "Our sacred realms are being squeezed, curtailing civil liberties" she sings on that opening track before delivering the rallying cry, "Recruit the dreams that sing to thee/Let freedom ring." Smith will later invoke such kindred spirits as Gandhi and William Blake. The world may be going to hell in a handcart, she seems to infer, but there's always hope...
It's amazing to think that Smith is now 57 the same age, ironically, as George W. Bush, though you imagine her grasp of Middle Eastern politics is somewhat more coherent. Yet more amazing is that she still believes in the power of rock n roll; that she can still summon such beautiful fury when her heroes are busy flogging Victoria's Secrets.
Yet despite the overbearing subject matter of war, morality and protest "Trampin'" doesn't feel like a particularly heavy album. Among the buzzsaw riffs that define the likes of "Stride Of Your Mind" there is the pretty folk in the shape of "Tresspassin'" while "Mother Rose" fades on a coda akin to The Beatles' "Dear Prudence". Despite a sometimes austere reputation youre reminded that Smith always had a sharp pop sensibility.
And she still performs those trademark set-piece poetry marathons pretty tidily too. The twelve-minute "Radio Baghdad" (the title recalling 1976's "Radio Ethiopia") builds from a measured spoken word intro to a blistering rap. "Gandhi" too a mere ten-minutes - glides from low blues moan to full on attack. "400,000,000 people! Awake from your slumbers! And get 'em with the numbers!" she hollers. We, the people, still have the power.
Best of all is the eponymous closing track with Smith's daughter, Jesse, supplying elegant piano to what is a quite jaw-dropping spiritual - like Robert Mitchum's rendition of "Leaning On The Everlasting Arm" with the sentiments of "Jerusalem". It's beautiful like Johnny Cash's "Hurt" was beautiful and marks a poignant end to a poignant album.
