Patti Smith has returned to the poetic-punk format of 1975's Horses, which the Polar prize committee recently described as "Rimbaud with amps". Four of Horses' personnel – Smith, guitarist Lenny Kaye, drummer Jay Dee Daugherty and Television' Tom Verlaine – are present here. It's a mixture of pop songs and poetic explorations, aided by the instantly resumed chemistry between Kaye's shimmering hooks and Smith's sensual vocals. While she has never sung better, the pop songs hit home first: the dreamy Amerigo, the reflective Maria and sublime April Fool, a headrushing tale of outlaw lovers who "race through alleyways in our tattered coats". The more esoteric monologues demand – and reward – perseverance, especially the 10-minute Constantine's Dream, a passionate defence of her other great love, art, complete with fantasy sequences set in the Garden of Eden. The collision of sound and language is exhilarating; if it is also occasionally impenetrable, that's down to her death-or-glory manifesto to "let me die on the back of adventure, with a brush".