Now 50 years of age, Smith is older and wiser, and more mature, not always a bad thing in a rocker, if they also happen to be an artist. Her experience of death and bereavement, in the shape of her husband and former MC5 guitarist Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith, her photographer friend Robert Mapplethorpe, and her brother and road manager Todd, has lent depth to her work.
Gone Again is a gathering of old friends, with long time collaborator Lenny Kaye producing and playing guitar, John Cale, producer of Horses, appearing on one track, ‘Beneath The Southern Cross’, and former boyfriend Tom Verlaine, of Television fame, contributing to ‘Beneath The Southern Cross’, ‘Summer Cannibals’, ‘Wing’ and ‘Fireflies’. The title track and ‘Summer Cannibals’ were co-written with Fred, and the album is dedicated to his memory. Horses ended with a song called ‘Elegy’, and Gone Again also ends with an elegy in the shape of ‘Farewell Reel’, a simple valediction by Smith to her husband, which she performs solo with acoustic guitar, and which is almost unbearably moving without ever becoming sentimental.
Gone Again is not Horses (Part 2), but saying that is a bit like complaining that Proust only wrote one A La Recherché Du Temps Perdu. Smith still beats hell out of your current crop of rock chicks, your Holes and your Bellys, who are only half her age, but not even half as good.

First published in 46A