Oh, shit! Insipid enemy pop music has infiltrated your brain, triggering a meaningless obsession with sing-song melodies and catchy, vapid lyricism that makes you both docile and boring as hell. Is it too late for you? Probably. But look! Here comes bad-ass musical vigilante Patti Smith, arriving live, on the scene to save your soul from the black hole of Vampire Weekend CD-Rs from which there is no return. And by her side? None other than Bloody Valentine/upcoming ATP curator Kevin Shields.
Their master plan: take two live recordings of sold-out performances of The Coral Sea, Smith's posthumous tribute to friend and photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, dust ’em off, shine ’em up, and inject them into your C-G-D chord progression-loving veins.
The double-disc is set to be released July 11 on the duo's own imprint, PASK, and will be the first official issuing of the 2005/2006 recordings of the two London shows. Now, this ain't no pussyfooting around. Shields and Smith are serious about emotional resuscitation, and you best not let them down. Dealing with Mapplethorpe's terminal illness by way of frenzied spoken-word prose and backed by a climactic storm of drone and noise, Coral Sea is an epic elegy of what can only be described as "a kind of screaming requiem." Nineteen years after Mapplethorpe's death, Smith's performance is as raw and anguished as ever, which should move your cold heart to feeling a little compassion, a little distress, a little empathy -- anything? No? You selfish bastard, you.