Banga Patti Smith

Listen to Patti going through each track at her web site

NPR

.... I've noticed that once a pop musician turns older than 60 — Smith is 65 — the by-now-idiotic, almost-meaningless word "icon" is attached to the musician in reviews like a leech. The word sucks out the complexity of the artist, if he or she is an interesting one, and replaces it with banal compliments. Thus this marvelously uneven, frequently transporting new album ....

Observer

Banga is the 65-year-old's 11th album, one of the most satisfying of her latterday career. A performance poet before she ever got a band together, Smith's electrified presence and aggressive, incantatory style – part Dylan, part Jersey girl – have always aspired to a frequency that you might call sacred, if that word hadn't been sullied by the so-called new age. "Oh crown of wind, two royal leopards run with him," she murmurs on Seneca as circuitous guitar tones set out a mantric path. Out of context it might read like sophomoric poeticism, but like every song Smith sings it comes to the ear like a spell.