1 	People Have The Power 	5:09
2 	Up There Down There 	4:49
3 	Paths That Cross 	4:19
4 	Dream Of Life 	4:39
5 	Where Duty Calls 	7:48
6 	Going Under 	6:00
7 	Looking For You (I Was) 	4:06
8 	The Jackson Song 	5:25
9 	As The Night Goes By 	5:04
10 	Wild Leaves 	4:03

Bass – Bob Glaub (2), Gary Rasmussen (1, 3, 6), Kasim Sultan (4, 5, 7), Malcolm West (8)
Drums – Jay Dee Daugherty
Guitar – Fred "Sonic" Smith
Keyboards – Richard Sohl 
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Backing Vocals – Robin Nash, Andi Ostrowe
Percussion – Hearn Gadbois, Sammy Figueroa, Crusher Bennett
Bass – Malcolm West
Cello – Jesse Levy
Harp – Margaret Ross

The big difference between Patti Smith's four 1970s albums and this return to action after nine years lies in the choice of collaborator. Where Smith's main associate earlier had been Lenny Kaye, a deliberately simple guitarist, here her co-writer and co-producer (with Jimmy Iovine) was her husband, Fred "Sonic" Smith, formerly of the MC5, who played guitar with a conventional rock competence and who lent his talents to each of the tracks, giving them a mainstream flavor. In a sense, however, these polished love songs, lullabies, and political statements are not to be compared to the poetic ramblings of Smith's first decade of music-making -- she's so much...calmer this time out. But you can't help it. Where the Patti Smith of Horses inspired a generation of female rockers, the Patti Smith of Dream of Life sounds like she's been listening to later Pretenders albums and taking tips from Chrissie Hynde, one of her spiritual daughters. Dream of Life is the record of someone who is simply showing the flag, trying to keep her hand in, rather than announcing her comeback. Not surprisingly, having made it, Smith retreated from the public eye again until the '90s. ---William Ruhlmann, AllMusic Review

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01 – Amerigo
02 – April Fool
03 – Fuji-san
04 – This Is The Girl
05 – Banga
06 – Maria
07 – Mosaic
08 – Tarkovsky (The Second Stop Is Jupiter)
09 – Nine
10 – Seneca
11 – Constantine’s Dream
12 – After The Gold Rush
13 – Just Kids (bonus track)

Personnel:
    Patti Smith – vocals, producer
    Lenny Kaye – guitars, backing vocals (12), producer
    Tony Shanahan – bass, keyboards, backing vocals (12), producer
    Jay Dee Daugherty – drums, percussion, mandocello (7), backing vocals (12), producer
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    Tom Verlaine – guitar (2, 9)
    Jack Petruzzelli – guitar (1, 3—5, 7) hammond organ (9)
    Jackson Smith – guitar (2, 4, 6, 8, 12)
    Jesse Smith – piano (8, 12)
    Johnny Depp – guitar, drums (5)
    Louie Appel – drums (1, 6)
    Rob Morsberger – piano (6)
    Maxim Moston – violin (1, 6)
    Entcho Todorov – violin (1, 6)
    Hiroko Taguchi – viola (1, 6)
    Dave Eggar – cello (1, 6)
    Luca Lanzi - guitar (11)
    Riccardo Dellocchio - steel guitar (11)
    Sauro Lanzi - accordion (11)
    Massimilano Gregorio - bass (11)
    Fabrizio Morganti - percussion (11)
    Andreas Petermann - violin (11)
    Tadhg Brady - vocals (12)
    Clea Payer - vocals (12)
    Fynn Payer - vocals (12)
    Kobyn Payer - vocals (12)

Patti Smith’s very existence as a major, major-label artist flies in the face of music biz logic. The queen of the fierce poet-androgynes hasn’t had a hit single since Because the Night, her 1978 power-ballad co-write with Bruce Springsteen. Its parent album, Easter, is the only Smith set to reach the UK top 20 (both Easter and its 79 follow-up Wave cracked the US top 20).

The 65-year-old took eight years off in the 80s to raise her children, and has made just seven albums in the 24 years since her comeback. Yet here she is, still in tandem with her first guitarist Lenny Kaye, still getting the big prestige-artist push from her label, and still making tough-but-dreamy, sensual-but-uncompromising primary colour rock that behaves as if the last 30 years of musical innovation never happened. Weirdest of all, Patti Smith still sounds vital, relevant and quite, quite brilliant.

Banga takes its name from Mikhail Bulgakov – Banga was the name the Russian novelist gave to Pontius Pilate’s dog in The Master and Margarita – and its inspirations from a forever-quaking planet Earth. There is a beautiful girl-group ballad tribute to Amy Winehouse (This Is the Girl), and a glowering slice of country-ish rock apparently written as a birthday gift to Johnny Depp (Nine). Elsewhere, we find a gorgeous ode to the Italian explorer who lent his name to America (Amerigo), beside songs inspired by Japanese earthquakes (Fuji-San) and a classic sci-fi movie (Tarkovsky (The Second Stop Is Jupiter)).

But while Smith’s sphere of lyrical interest is as wide as the world and as deep as heavyweight literature, her music remains resolute and defiant: the poetic form of rock hatched in the 1960s by Dylan, The Doors and The Stones is what Patti loves and what she’s good at. And just to punch the point home, she closes Banga with an appropriately haunting and reverent version of Neil Young’s classic After the Gold Rush, the post-apocalyptic calm after the storms and anxieties of the previous 11 songs.

You know that old joke about how every Bowie album gets reviewed as “his best album since Scary Monsters” but never actually is? Well, it’s time for the iconic female equivalent of the same yarn. Banga is the best Patti Smith album since Horses. No one else makes rock records as rich, poetic and sexy as this. Not even Polly Harvey. --- Garry Mulholland, BBC Review

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01. Are You Experienced?
02. Everybody Wants To Rule The World
03. Helpless 
04. Gimme Shelter 
05. Within You Without You 
06. White Rabbit	 
07. Changing Of The Guards 
08. The Boy In The Bubble 
09. Soul Kitchen 
10. Smells Like Teen Spirit 
11. Midnight Rider 
12. Pastime Paradise

Patti Smith - Clavinet, Vocals 
Jay Dee Daugherty - Drums, Percussion 
Lenny Kaye - Guitar (Acoustic), Guitar (Electric)
Tony Shanahan - Bass, Bass (Upright), Keyboards, Vocals 
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Cello – Giovanni Sollima
Bass – Barre Duryea, Flea, Paul Nowinski
Guitar – Jackson Smith, Tom Verlaine, Rich Robinson, Jack Petruzelli, Duncan Webster
Accordion – Jay Dee Daugherty
Backing Vocals – Jesse Smith
Dulcimer – Rich Robinson
Banjo – John Cohen, Sam Shepard, Walker Shepard
Fiddle – Peter Stampfel
Drums – Mario Resto
Piano – Luis Resto

According to her brief liner notes, Patti Smith indulged the idea of a covers album, considering songs as far back as 1978 on the back pages of Jean Genet's Thief's Journal when she was still assembling her groundbreaking early catalog; it's evident she feels that covers have been part and parcel of her recording experience from the outset. Her debut, Horses, has her own apocalyptic version of Van Morrison's "Gloria" as well as a healthy portion of Chris Kenner's "Land of a Thousand Dances" inside "Land." On 1979's Wave she covered the Byrds "So You Want to Be (A Rock and Roll Star)," and scored with the single. Her intuitive reading of Bob Dylan's "Wicked Messenger" was a beautiful aspect of Gone Again in 1996, and she paid tribute to Allen Ginsberg by using one of his poems in "Spell," on 1997's Peace and Noise. And who can forget her reading of Pete Townshend's "My Generation" issued on the 30th Anniversary edition of Horses?

While it's a popular notion these days to consider a covers album a stop-gap between albums, the truth is that Smith has never been in a hurry when it comes to recording, though she has been very productive over the last decade. She has always paid tribute in one form or another to her heroes, however disparate. This collection is a wondrous sampling of pop hits, hard rock, ballads, and soul done in Smith's inimitable way of interpreting songs -- by getting inside them and breathing their meaning, and often uncovering new shades of meaning -- from within. She begins with a newer, more spiritual reading of Jimi Hendrix's "Are You Experienced?" letting her fine band -- Jay Dee Daugherty, Lenny Kaye and Tony Shanahan -- pulse the tune's changes and vibe while she comes across as a shaman leading the way down into the underworld. Her taking on Tears for Fears' smash hit "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" may come as a surprise, but in her open-throated take, the tune brims with the wisdom of a prophetess proclaiming the folly of humankind's need for power and greed. And while her version of Neil Young's "Helpless" may come across as a bit too reverent, the seed of memory is what infuses her take on this beautiful ballad. Loss and remembrance become a memento mori, an effigy to those who who've traveled on from this plane of existence. "Gimme Shelter" is a natural, and it carries all the foreboding of an apocalypse out the original nearly 40 years later as if to say that Jagger and Richard were right all along. The tune becomes a plea for shelter, rather than a demand. George Harrison's "Within You Without You" is the complete blending of spiritual longing, with droning acoustic guitars, skittering snares and open chord drones from Kaye's electric and fleshly experience. Smith's read of Dylan's "Changing of the Guard" is ambitious. Where the original was drenched in mariachi horns and a female backing chorus, she overturns those trappings and accents Dylan's last expressionistic lyric. She sings as if everything is at stake in this clash between the forces of light and darkness, where Melville, Dumas, Joan of Arc, the myth of Orpheus and the tales of Ovid are informed by both biblical prophecy and the tarot. The meld of acoustic guitars, brushed drums and muted kickdrum wind around her. The piano and Kaye's muted electric guitars fill the space where most of the backing vocals and horns once were -- except where Smith's daughter Jesse Paris Smith harmonizes -- and seduce the emotion out of the nearly surreal narrative of renunciation.

Perhaps no tune moves here like Smith's reading of "Smells Like Teen Spirit," with help from Sam Shepherd and John Cohen on banjo, Peter Stampfel on fiddle, and Kaye and Duncan Webster on guitar in a strange dreamscape driven by a standup bass. Smith digs into the lyric and then offers a poem that is as much an early American folk song elegy to the environment Kurt Cobain grew up in as it is to what's happening to America itself, but with current touches. Her poet's heart not only complements the original but makes the song timeless and brings Cobain's mature spirit to flesh once more. It is the most moving track on the set and the most visionary. Smith closes her set with a true outlaws campfire song in Gregg Allman's "Midnight Rider," and a darker than written, sparsely textured, elegiac cover of Stevie Wonder's "Pastime Paradise," with a truly haunting piano by Luis Resto. Her small notes annotating each track are welcome and revealing in and of themselves. If this is truly the covers album Smith has always wanted to record, she's succeeded on a level with the best of her studio recordings and a welcome addition to her catalog. Each song has her imprint without sacrificing the intent or spirit of the original. Full of slow burning passion and emotion, Twelve is magnificent. ---Thom Jurek, allmusic.com

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