Patti Smith Group: Patti Smith (vocals, guitar); Lenny Kaye, Ivan Kral (vocals, guitar, bass); Bruce Brody (keyboards, synthesizer); Jay Dee Daugherty (drums, percussion).

Additional personnel: Richard Sohl, Allen Lanier (keyboards); John Paul Fetta (bass); Andi Ostrowe (percussion).

Recorded at The Record Plant, New York, New York and The House Of Music, West Orange, New Jersey.

Patti Smith came back from the year-and-a-half break caused by her fall from a stage in January 1977 without having resolved the art-versus-commerce argument that had marred her second album, Radio Ethiopia. In fact, that argument was in some ways the theme of her third. Easter, produced by Bruce Springsteen associate Jimmy Iovine, was Smith's most commercial-sounding effort yet and, due to the inclusion of Springsteen's "Because the Night" (with Smith's revised lyrics), a Top Ten hit, it became her biggest seller, staying in the charts more than five months and getting into the Top 20 LPs. But Smith hadn't so much sold out as she had learned to use her poetic gifts within an album rock context. Certainly, a song that proclaimed, "Love is an angel disguised as lust/Here in our bed until the morning comes," was pushing the limits of pop radio, and on "Babelogue," Smith returned to her days of declaiming poetry on New York's Lower East Side. That rant (significantly ending, "I have not sold my soul to God") led into the provocative "Rock n Roll Nigger," a charged rocker with a chorus that went, "Outside of society/Is where I want to be." Smith made the theme from the '60s British rock movie Privilege her own and even got into the U.K. charts with it. And on songs like "25th Floor," Iovine, Smith, and her group were able to accommodate both the urge to rock out and the need to expound. So, Easter turned out to be the best compromise Smith achieved between her artistic and commercial aspirations. ~ William Ruhlmann

"Rock and roll is the only cultural asset America has given the world," declared a young Patti Smith years before she made her own records. Then she made EASTER, which made that asset a little more valuable. EASTER is an essential cultural touchstone.

Whereas HORSES was built on poetry and RADIO ETHIOPIA scrapped accessibility for primal cacophony, EASTER was The Patti Smith Group's most approachable package of Smith's vision.

As an artist and songwriter, Smith constantly pushed the boundaries of rock's scope: The demented "Space Monkey" builds a visual landscape, "Because The Night" melds pop with literary intention, and "Ghost Dance" transcends all musical genres to become a mantra. Possibly the most powerful track on the album is Smith's epic "Babelogue/Rock N Roll Nigger" segue, where she incorporates Jimi Hendrix, Jesus Christ and Jackson Pollack into a paean to artistic individuality and its inevitable alienation.

Q (11/96, p.154) - 4 Stars (out of 5) - "...equally enthralling [as HORSES]..."a