At this point, it's almost redundant to note that Patti Smith was a poet before becoming a singer/songwriter. Her "transformation into a rock icon" (as Victor Bockris put it in his book Patti Smith: An Unauthorized Biography) came not at a rock show, but at a legendary reading she gave in New York in 1971, years before she started making music. But poetry was not just her first medium-- you could argue that it remained her primary gig even after music made her famous. Because in her best songs, Smith performs her words as much she sings them.
Nearly four decades on, Smith is still a compelling reader. Which is why The Coral Sea, a 2xCD set of two live performances of her 1996 book-length poem, is more than just an audiobook. Well, that and the fact that Smith chose Kevin Shields for instrumental accompaniment, which he makes primarily with guitar and effects. Spoken word set to improvised sound almost always involves some monotony and pretension, and Smith and Shields aren't immune. At times The Coral Sea is cringingly melodramatic, but given how often that is the case with spoken word, the duo avoids pitfalls more than one might expect.
Smith wrote The Coral Sea in 1996 in tribute to her friend Robert Mapplethorpe, who died of AIDS seven years before at age 42. She frames the artist's life as a sailor's voyage, and as Bockris noted, her verse has "near-biblical formality, old-fashioned usages, and relentless mythologizing [that are] sometimes overrich." The Coral Sea is an odd combination of unique descriptions ("The sky was black and glistening, as if spread with fresh tar"), new age-ish concepts ("The library of his inner self") and purple prose ("Tiny arrows burned with the seductive poison of love.") There's not much detail in Smith's metaphors, and her narrative is too general to offer much concrete about Mapplethorpe. In fact, judging by what's included here, the book could be a chore to read. But Smith's performance adds power to words that might feel dead on the page, and clearly conveys the effect Mapplethorpe had on her.
It takes a while for that effect to emerge. The first disc, a June 2005 concert at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall, starts out lifeless, with little variety in Smith's voice or Shields' metronomic guitar. Halfway through the hour-long performance, things pick up, as Smith yells fervent imperatives over shimmering waves from Shields' amp. The climax rolls into the final track, when Shields smothers Smith much the way the sea swallows the Smith's sailor.
The performance on disc two took place more than a year later, but the climax of the first show seems to have stuck. Here, Shields widens his palate, adding church-like organ, shivering vibrato, pastoral drones, and aggressive feedback. Smith opens up too, even singing occasionally, giving her words more color and urgency. A peak comes when she chants a simple mantra-- "He liked to work/ He liked to feel/ He didn't like to think/ He didn't have to talk"-- over Shields' energetic noise. Later, Shields goes silent, clearing space for some of Smith's best, strangest lines, like "He distracted himself by playing a game of assessing the value of his organs." On the final track, the guitarist returns with heavy noise akin to the detonations heard in live versions of MBV's "You Made Me Realise".
Moments like that make it worth wading through the album's less-exciting sections. The performance was probably more engaging to witness that it is to just hear (reportedly, films of ocean scenery were projected behind the duo), but Smith and Shields bring enough passion to The Coral Sea to make it ultimately transcend its flaws.
