P a t t i   S m i t h ,  "G o n e  A g a i n"  ( A r i s t a )

By STEPHANIE ZACHAREK patti Smith has always seemed like nothing so much as a warrior, armed with poetry that could pierce like steel, fearlessly staking out her own territory even as she urged listeners to claim theirs, too. In the context of "Gone Again," Smith's first record in eight years, the comparison seems more apt than ever. Filled with songs that trace the flickering outlines of sadness and loss, many of them written for Smith's late husband, Fred "Sonic" Smith, "Gone Again" is both elegy and celebration. It's a record that holds grief gently, treating it not as a trial but as a vulnerable, agonizingly beautiful treasure -- and, most important of all, one that has a life of its own. Smith's sadness rages and wanes -- even the layout of the songs seems to underscore the mutability of grief, its inability to be nailed down as one unchanging emotion. Smith's grieving gives the songs life and shape, and it makes them dance when they could so easily have dragged. That's not so surprising when you think about it: shouldn't a warrior understand grief better than any of us? It's too bad that Smith's return to performing has been hailed by both critics and fans as the second coming. The hype over her return in some ways does her a disservice. It barrels over her understated approach to performing, and the subtlety of her new work has almost been obscured by the clamor. "Gone Again" demands careful listening: it isn't a great record, but it's a deeply affecting one that seems, strangely, both richer and simpler each time you listen to it. It also has the feel of a homecoming: Smith's band here includes former Patti Smith Group members Jay Dee Daugherty and Lenny Kaye (the group is rounded out by Tony Shanahan on bass and Luis Resto on keyboards; legendary guitarist Tom Verlaine guests on a few tracks), and their playing seems at once familiar and bitingly fresh. They're a perfect fit for Smith's songs, some of which have the feel of old folk songs, passed down and worn smooth like the floorboards of an old house. "Dead to the World" is a listing sea shanty about a lover who visits in a dream ("He was less than a breath of shimmer and smoke/the life in his fingers unwound my existence/dead to the world alive I awoke"). The specters of Irish and Appalachian folk music roll through "Ravens," with its wheedling mandolin (played by Smith's sister Kimberly) and thrumming acoustic guitar. Smith's lyrics here are plainer, less turned, than her earlier work, but they never fall into the pseudomystical "We move with the sun and the planets" kind of pap that artists sometimes drag out when they get carried away with death and redemption as concepts. "Beneath the Southern Cross," cowritten with Kaye, opens with almost rudimentary-sounding guitar strumming that builds into swooping, glorious washes of sound. "Oh to be not anyone/gone/this maze of being skin," Smith sings, her voice rippling with its own certainty and assuredness like a torn silk flag. Still, she lets you hear how she's haunted by the sense of not feeling right in her own skin, of wanting to shed it -- not to crawl out of it like a snake, ashamed, but to rise out of it so she can finally fly. On "About a Boy," written in remembrance of Kurt Cobain, Smith's voice is restless and bristling, but it's as if she were trying to conjure, by sheer will, a mossy alcove for him to rest in. Kaye's guitar matches her intensity: it has a ragged, scuffling beauty that grows rougher and more magnificent as the song moves forward, building a freeform castle of grace chord by chord. It's only fitting that Smith should write a song of such unabashed tenderness for Cobain: that's one of her great gifts, an ability to write songs for guys that lavish their subjects not just with love and admiration but with a kind of blessing. (Her "Frederick," off 1979's "Wave," turned a meat-and-potatoes three-syllable name into one of the most joyous, deeply felt love songs of its era.) It follows, then, that the two most moving songs on "Gone Again" -- "My Madrigal" and "Farewell Reel" -- were both written for Smith's greatest love, Fred Smith. "Our love came from above/and wilder still is the wind that howls like a voice that knows it's gone," she sings on "Farewell Reel," acknowledging that missing him only makes her feel more alive. And on "My Madrigal," her voice sounds deeper and earthier than ever before -- it swims along with the lush current of guest Jane Scarpantoni's cello -- and yet it also seems to both hold and reflect light, like the pearly surface of a fish's belly. "We waltzed beneath motionless skies/all heaven's glory turned in your eyes/you pledged me your heart, till death do us part," Smith sings, the heat in her voice burning away the triteness of the words. Heartbreaking in its simplicity, "My Madrigal" is more than just a lamentation for a lover who's gone: it's a song to keep him warm and safe, wherever he is -- a gift from a warrior queen who covers her dead not just with soil, but with blankets of dreams. Stephanie Zacharek chose the Beatles' "Rubber Soul" as her "Personal Best" album in Issue 20 of Salon. She lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.

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