Royal Albert Hall, London
Protean punk poet Patti Smith, backed by a full band, is in expansive mood in a riveting, career-spanning show
One worn black boot on the monitor, her long, white, artist’s hands carving up the air, Patti Smith is a performer who asks for no quarter. Her rakish authority has only been cemented by the passage of time since she started out, her uncompromising poetry accompanied by the lash of proto-punk early 70s electric guitar.
Tonight, Smith’s sonorous voice lends itself as easily to a howl on her best-known songs as it does to a tender croon for her cover of Stevie Wonder’s Blame It on the Sun. “Free money!” she shouts, both hungry and sneering, channelling the yearning of her mother whose hopes for better hinged on a lottery ticket. Ain’t It Strange, a reggae-leaning track from Smith’s 1976 album Radio Ethiopia, is intense, foreshadowing Nick Cave with its “hand of God” refrain. “Transcend! Transcend!” she seethes.