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Patti Smith: St George’s Church, Kemptown: Review

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The fact that Patti Smith omitted Gloria, with its opener “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine”, from her set-list at St George’s Church, Kemptown was inconsequential when compared with how deftly she interwove songs from her 39-year career with the wistful words of stories pulled from her critically acclaimed novel, Just Kids.

The acoustic show, which was billed as featuring the Godmother of Punk herself and band member Tony Shanahan, also featured, cult-folk urchin Patrick Wolf, now raven haired, who dominated the violin and harp section, and drummer Andy Newmark. Whether or not Patti and Co really did find Patrick “busking in Brighton”, is open for debate.

Her classics found themselves reinvigorated lying alongside her captivating spoken word. Ode to womanhood Dancing Barefoot blistered under Patti’s more guttural delivery and ricocheted off the church walls, while Redondo Beach retained its calypso lilt in the all-acoustic setting.

Anecdotes were at once moving: the reading of an undelivered letter to the late Robert Mapplethorpe; nostalgic: John & Yoko’s ‘War Is Over (If You Want It)’ billboards beaming down upon her during a late-night walk through New York; and impassioned: her love of poet William Blake, which proceeded the country-tinged My Blakean Year.

While these moments were genuinely touching, the middle-part of the gig was marred by an uncharacteristic outpouring of mushy sentimentality, leaving us wondering whether this was indeed the real Patti Smith or an impostor in a bedraggled wig with a Royalist agenda.

A bumbling, fawning name-check of “Little” Prince George was met with a wall of uneasy silence, while Amy Winehouse was the subject of This Is The Girl, a stumbling piece of elevator music irreparably buckled by the ham-fisted lyric: “This the blind that turned in wine/This is the wine of the house it is said”.

Awkward repartee aside, the evening was redeemed by a pounding Pissing In A River and Because The Night, before Saint Patti implored us to embark on a trip down the aisle to the altar for a bop to the cathartic pop of People Have The Power.

Strange for a sinner, yet so thrilling!

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