Ronnie Spector: She Talks to Rainbows [US] : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Ronnie Spector sang "Be My Baby" as the ultimate bad Catholic dream girl, a barely legal Spanish Harlem incident with a voice that's been blowing woofers since 1963. She is St. Veronica, blessed among women, inspiring bad girls from Patti Smith to Madonna to spend years chasing her echo, not to mention nice Catholic boys like Scorsese, Springsteen and Johnny Thunders. The Voice is back with her first record in more than a decade, a five-song High Mass co-produced by Joey Ramone. She belts "Don't Worry Baby," which Brian Wilson co-wrote for her, and "I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine," which she wrote for herself. But the heartbreaker is Thunders' "You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory"; he could have written it for her, but now that he's dead, she's singing to him. Ronnie sings it as the Ronettes ballad that Johnny must have always wanted it to be, a punk hymn full of incense and prayer candles and furtive eye contact between the altar boys and choirgirls. It's rock & roll as Holy Communion. (RS 824)

ROB SHEFFIELD