Patti Smith & Kevin Shields - The Coral Sea

A meeting of minds and sounds

If at first Kevin Shields and Patti Smith seem an unlikely pairing, in fact, it makes perfect sense. The expansive meditations of Horses must have influenced the young Shields and, in these improv performances of Smith’s 1996 in-memoriam poem for her former lover Robert Mapplethorpe, they’re each other’s perfect foil.

Smith’s driving, fervent spoken-word adds forward propulsion to Shields’ ambient guitar washes, while his lambent, rolling textures soften and tame Smith’s hectoring tendencies. The poem charts the final thoughts and memories of M, a painter in the grip of a terminal illness, travelling to see the stars of the Southern Cross before he dies, and recalls Kate Bush’s The Ninth Wave as well as Smith’s own Land in its emotionally-charged reflections on life, death and art.

The performances, a year apart, are very different. Smith, who admits she could never maintain purely spoken-word performances of the nearly hour-long piece, on the first outing seems more on edge, raw. Shields’ guitar is fairly sparse and, for him, sounding surprisingly guitar-like in places. On the second, Smith is more controlled, her voice weaving hypnotically with Shield’s ambient, glittering waves of sound, and the effect is nothing short of rapturous. A sea of love, where everyone will want to drown.

5 stars 5 stars 5 stars 5 stars 5 stars

Pask | PASK 001 CD

Reviewed by Emily Mackay
<< Back to Issue 353

Login Here

Free Newsletter


Subscribe to
our email newsletter by emailing:

anna.bowen@
metropolis.co.uk