On [Radio Ethiopia] Patti Smith lays back, refusing to assert herself as she did on last year's Horses. The key is in the billing: on Radio Ethiopia, her group dominates. But while Smith can be an inventive, sometimes inspired writer and performer, her band is basically just another loud punk-rock gang of primitives, riff-based and redundant. The rhythm is disjointed, the guitar chording trite and elementary. Even at best ("Distant Fingers," for instance), the Patti Smith Group isn't much more than a distant evocation of psychedelic amateurs like Clear Light.

Smith seems to lack the direction necessary to live up to her own best ideas—the song-poem structure of the first album wasn't completely effective, but here there's no structure at all. Even her lyric writing, the most captivating and polished part of her work, seems depersonalized—there's nothing as moving as "Redondo Beach" or "Kimberly" on this...