Around the time of Gone Again—the 1996 album that marked her return to music—Patti Smith told a journalist that she’d expected her onstage persona to be different. After all, she was now a widow, raising two young kids. “I imagined that I would just be sort of straightforward and dignified and somewhat folky,” Smith said. But neither Gone Again nor its follow-up, 1997’s Peace and Noise, matched that expectation. Peace and Noise finds Smith settling confidently into her vocals, and there’s a strong connection with the musicians in the band—which makes sense, as the album finds her re-teaming with guitarist Lenny Kaye and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty, both veterans of the Patti Smith Group days. Though the three musicians hadn’t played together on a regular basis for years, these were some of Smith’s most trusted peers. And though she’s perceived as a solo artist, she’s someone who’s always liked being part of a band—a team player who delights in being in a larger musical ensemble. More than half the songs on Peace and Noise were co-written with poet Oliver Ray, whom Smith had met via Allen Ginsberg. (When asked to describe Ray’s role in the band, Kaye simply said: “I like to listen to the way he hears things.”) Ray was decades younger than the rest of the band, and helped bring in more modern sonic dynamics; as a result, there’s more space on Peace and Noise, which suits the material better, and allows Smith shine as a vocal interpreter of her own work. The album’s highlights include “Dead City,” a diatribe about the destruction of Detroit; “Don’t Say Nothing,” a protest song about the consequences of not speaking up; and the utterly majestic “Spell,” which is Ginsberg’s “Footnote to Howl” set against a droning, free-jazz dirge. “Death Singing” could be a folk song from the backcountry, while “Memento Mori” allows Smith to play in the improvisational style that marked her work in the 1970s. A loud and glorious 10-minute celebration that finds Smith pushing back against death and dying, “Memento Mori” marks the return of Johnny—the character listeners first encountered in Smith’s 1975 song “Land”—and finds him heading off to war.