There is no way to make this review sound at all objective. I want to drink wine in Paris with Patti, fly kites with her, run around the forest with her, make weird art projects together, collect the thoughts that seep out of her in conversation and sponge paint across the sky with them. Thursday night’s performance did nothing to dispel those urges. The set began and ended with Horses, with Smith kicking off the night with the southern California-appropriate “Redondo Beach” as the full moon hung fat and low in the sky behind her.

She laid her poetry upon us like a mystic laying hands on pilgrims, reminding us we are slobbering, laughing, dreaming and alive, however painful that can get. And pain seeps through songs like “Pissing in a River” and “Beneath the Southern Cross,” but still something as trite and often blankly appealed to as hope overrides all of that. Even in “Free Money,” where the protagonist clearly can’t afford any of the things they dream about, waxes poetic about the sweetness of those dreams.

Smith took time between “Frederick,” a love song for her late husband, Fred “Sonic” Smith, and “Free Money” to point out the full moon and then cheerfully call the audience “a sorry-ass bunch of wolves,” in response to their obligingly issued timid howls. Longtime guitarist Lenny Kaye did a sweet tribute to 1920′s crooner Russ Columbo, which Smith followed with her power pop collaboration with Bruce Springsteen, “Because the Night,” dedicating the anthem to Elizabeth Taylor circa A Place in the Sun, doing her best Liz: “Come to mama,” dropping her voice, “Tell mama aaaaall.”

Smith rounded out the set with a couple numbers encouraging the people to believe in such hippie ideals as peace, “Peaceable Kingdom,” and their own power, “People Have the Power,” before slamming an extended version of “Gloria” into our brains. The encore provided a spectacular, sing-along ode to recently deceased songwriter Ellie Greenwich, in the form of The Ronettes’ “Be My Baby,” and ended with the Grateful Dead’s “Not Fade Away.” And Patti hasn’t faded; not one bit.

—Ayse Arf