Patti Smith - Horses 180 g LP

It isn't hard to make the case for Patti Smith as a punk rock progenitor based on her debut album, which anticipated the new wave by a year or so: the simple, crudely played rock and roll, featuring Lenny Kaye's rudimentary guitar work, the anarchic spirit of Smith's vocals, and the emotional and imaginative nature of her lyrics - all prefigure the coming movement as it evolved on both sides of the Atlantic. Smith is a rock critic's dream, a poet as steeped in '60s garage rock as she is in French Symbolism; Land carries on from the Doors' The End, marking her as a successor to Jim Morrison, while the borrowed choruses of Gloria and Land of a Thousand Dances are more in tune with the era of sampling than they were in the '70s.