Review Summary: More musically ambitious (and more inconsistent) than Horses, Patti Smith’s unfairly maligned second full-length effort is more than capable of standing independent to its predecessor.
I sometimes wonder how many times the designation of “sophomore slump” is unfairly applied by the kind of haughty critics who see any deviation from their personal expectations for an album as a kind of betrayal. The thing is, like many artists who debut with instant classics, Patti had made such a splash with Horses that living up to that impact on her second release must have seemed a near-impossible task. It seemed that, for Patti, the solution was to step back from the spotlight a bit and bring her backing band more to the fore. In doing so, she allowed herself to become more a part of her band, where on Horses it had seemed that the band was almost a part of her, a backdrop and complement to her fiercely independent poetics. The response from the music press was near-universal derision, with Radio Ethiopia being savaged by critics both for its more sinewy, hard-rock approach to rock and roll and its “self-indulgent” experimentation. It was an almost predictable reaction, but one that the album really didn’t deserve. The howling vitality and raw intelligence running like an artery through the album defies every shallow criticism the musical literati slapped onto it at the time of its release.
Smith never made it a secret that she wanted Radio Ethiopia to have a more commercial sound, electing to work with producer Jack Douglas, who had most famously produced none other than John Lennon. And initially, the album seems to bear that out that commercial vision: opener “Ask the Angels” is a catchy, uncharacteristically muscular rocker, more Mick Jagger swagger than Tom Verlaine jitter, featuring a rip-roaring guitar solo that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Cheap Trick album. It’s a fine song, and a great showcase of that iconic Patti Smith yowl, but for the three minutes that make up the song one can understand why the critics tended to pan Radio Ethiopia as a trite sellout album. But immediately “Ain’t It Strange” refutes that designation, its swampy, Doors-esque howl-and stomp building and receding into a whirling climax that drops just as suddenly into a panted whisper that burns the last embers of the song into nothing. That almost anti-commercial experimentation continues with “Poppies” a sensual, detached piece of heroin-poetry that drifts along for seven minutes on a blues-rock riff until it jarringly gives way to soaring Pop piano ballad “Pissing in a River”, which belies its vulgar title by being perhaps the most accessible song on the album.
That sharp variation between flirting with the commercial and diving headlong into primal experimentation is perhaps a running theme of Radio Ethiopia, as the Patti Smith Group can’t seem to decide which direction their evolution should take them. This certainly makes Radio Ethiopia something of a transition album, but also a bit of an anomaly for the band as the noisy fuckery seen on the title track are completely divorced from the androgynous art-house coolness of Horses, as well as the kinder, more digestible Easter. It was on the title track that most of the accusations of self-indulgence were piled, perhaps the criticism that was most justified and yet (to me at least) unfair. The roaring, pounding piece of psychedelic noise-rock runs like a burning freight train for ten full minutes, Patti abandoning herself to mostly incomprehensible snarls as the band burns and collapses around her. Accusations of self-indulgence may be justifiable but they fail to take in the scope and fury that makes the title track the zenith of the album.
In hindsight the level of vitriol that was directed at the Patti Smith Group’s second LP by the press seems a little idiosyncratic. In a sense, the criticism isn’t without merit: at no point does the album reveal itself as immediately iconic as that immortal opening line of Gloria does, and it’s certainly more of a group effort than Horses: the guitars are heftier and riffier, the band is working increasingly with Patti rather than for her and Patti’s poetry takes a bit of a backseat to her dynamic vocal stylings. But the two main accusations, selling out and self-indulgence, seem to be at odds with each other, especially since the band’s newfound hard rock sensibilities are so effectively undermined both by Patti’s continuing focus on cutting, offbeat poetry and her wild vocal stylings. Ultimately, the album makes enough of a statement on its own that it doesn’t necessarily need the comparison to Horses, in fact the preconception that it even had to live up to, or be a sequel to that album only obscures its artistic merits, to which the contemporary critical reaction can attest. With that in mind, Radio Ethiopia leaves its mark as a powerful, uncompromising statement that richly deserves the critical reexamination that it’s received over the years.
