Patty Griffin
First things first. Great cover. No idea why.
It shouldn’t appeal. I’m neither religious nor especially appreciative of anything associated with religion. I’m a fan of both “Life Of Brian” and “Dogma”. It all kind of suggests that neither the album nor its cover should appeal and yet they undoubtedly do.
Cover aside, I’m also an admirer of the song rather than the singer; the melody rather than the rhythm (and I say that as an ex-drummer of some averageness); the arrangement not the instrumentalist. I’m not averse to specific voices. Indeed, there are some voices that get me every time but it’s just never been the focus for me. Patty however gets me every time.
It’s not that she’s an especially emotive singer, at least not unless you confuse sheer volume with emotion. It’s not that she’s especially technically adept, although she definitely sits on the right side of perfect pitch.
Remember the cliche about singers who emote so much they could sing a phone book and still get to you? Every time someone says that to me all I tend to hear is someone over emoting. A singer with specific foibles and ticks that have evolved into a style that’s a shorthand for emotion rather than emotional in itself. Generally, I find those singers hellishly annoying. An abridged version of scat as practiced by countless latter day r ‘n’ b singers doing, for example, Aretha covers and communicating half the greatness specifically by using three times the notes!
Why does Patty get to me every time then? Well, I guess that she just a specific combination of lyrical deftness; dynamics and technique that just happen to push my buttons. She’s one of the few singers I admire in whom I could admire the singing in itself even when the songs are not that great. It’s the overall economy of style (both lyrically and vocally) that sets her apart.
Sure enough, her own shorthand is all over this rather fine CD of mostly religious covers.
Swinging acoustic blues with an upright bass; snare played by a guy you just know is standing up, and, guitar with just enough slap to convince you it’s more authentic than pastiche? – yup, check.
Slow building balled with famous female backing vocalist? – check.
Death ballad? – check. Well, you get the idea by now. In some ways then this fits the template of being just another fine Patty Griffin album. Well played and brilliantly sung. Normally that sentence would have also said brilliantly written but, bar two songs, these are all covers.
Hardly unexpected then to report that, yes, those covers run the gamut from the well known to the rather obscure. Equally unsurprising to report also that they range from (merely) fine performances to compelling performances of stunningly good songs.
As I’m no expert on these songs or their background it’s sometimes hard to judge whether in fact mediocre songs are being elevated by ludicrously great performances but when you’re bust being sucked in and spat out you kind of don’t care.
On that basis it’s hardly fair to pull out individual songs but “Death Got A Warrant” is a personal fave. Sparse; powerful; technically excellent and beautifully recorded it’s all that great music should be, religious or otherwise.
It says a lot then that at the end of another very good Griffin album you’re left with a slight sense of anti-climax.
In part I suspect this is simply that she’s such a great songwriter that there’s disappointment at only having two originals here, especially when one of them is the immediately obvious as classic Griffin “Coming Home To Me”.
On the other hand there’s also a sense that she’s found a groove and it’s almost too easy. She is, as a friend and fellow Patty fan remarked astutely, sounding like herself!
Being “herself” is probably a great place for her to be and this is a fine addition to the canon but I am clearly not alone in thinking that Patty left a part of herself behind when she couldn’t get “Silver Bell” into the public domain and has almost shut a part of herself away in the aftermath of those now distant record company woes. What we get, like what we have here, is immensely classy and thoroughly enjoyable but maybe it’s time to revisit the lyrical complexity of her debut or the rock power of “Flaming Red”?
