Never a stranger to tackling other people’s songs, both live and on previous albums, Smith goes the whole hog on Twelve with mixed results. Plundering classics from the Stones (Gimme Shelter), Jimi Hendrix (Are You Experienced?) and Jefferson Airplane (White Rabbit) results in fairly by-the-book offerings, and Smith really only takes flight when she starts to tinker more adventurously with the material.
Covers of Smells Like Teen Spirit have come thick and fast over the years, but Smith rips it apart and puts it back together like a rural tone poem, dripping with banjo (played by playwright Sam Shepard) and fiddle. It’s a breathtaking reinvention, with the singer free-forming stanzas across the middle-eight. Likewise, George Harrison’s Within You Without You is overhauled with clipped military drums and ringing guitar lines that would have fitted on any of REM’s first three albums.
Tears For Fears’ Everybody Wants To Rule The World and Paul Simon’s Boy In The Bubble hardly rise above competent karaoke, but thankfully the record ends on a high with a country strum through the Allman Brothers’ Midnight Rider and a sparse take on Stevie Wonder’s hymnal Pastime Paradise, which occasionally veers towards trip-hop. Smith’s voice is atmospheric and emotive throughout, although a little more risk-taking would have been welcome.
