Patty Griffin - Children Running Through

[Sydneyfan]

Patty Griffin has never made a bad album and this one sounds like it might be something very special. Due out Feb 6 I believe.


Patty Griffin's new album Children Running Through (ATO) continues the
remarkable creative evolution that's quietly established Griffin as a
vital and singular musical force. It also belies her persistent
sensitive-singer-songwriter image—a limiting perception that fails to
fully convey the emotional depth and breadth of her songwriting or the
emotive power of her fluid, soulful singing. Indeed, the new disc's 12
Griffin originals maintain a timelessly truthful resonance that echoes a
variety of styles, most notably the classic R&B and gospel music that
have long been a source of inspiration for the artist.

On Children Running Through, Griffin's seamless songcraft is supported
by spare, spacious arrangements and production by Griffin along with
Mike McCarthy (Spoon) that emphasize her effortlessly eloquent lyrics,
her subtly indelible melodies and her sublimely expressive voice, while
making judicious use of such sonic frills as horns and strings. The
artful instrumental settings are perfectly suited to the soul glory of
“Heavenly Day,” the wistful melancholy of "You'll Remember," the
haunting intimacy of "Railroad Wings," the vivid storytelling of
"Trapeze," the rocking "No Bad News," the steely determination of "I
Don't Ever Give Up" and the healing gospel of "Up to the Mountain (MLK
Song)."

[Sydneyfan]

Review of new album from No Depression.

Patty Griffin- Children Running Through

Perhaps, even after a half-dozen well-regarded albums, a good handful of high-profile songwriting cuts, and regular reminders that Emmylou Harris and Buddy Miller and countless others think well of her work... perhaps we haven't properly been introduced to Patty Griffin yet.

Children Running Through opens softly, muted bass strings plucked against brushed drums, and then she eases into the microphone: confident, gloriously self-assured, bold and subtle all at once. She soars. The song is called "You'll Remember", and you will.

It is as if, for the first time in her career, Griffin is ready to stare her listeners straight in the eye, square her shoulders, and say, "Yeah, as a matter of fact, I am darn
good. Let me show you." And then blow the room away.

Every other record she has made-- and most of them are quite good-- seems now to have been a preamble to this work, by leaps and bounds the best of her career. It is possible, in hindsight, to trace all the elements back to other songs, other experiments, other producers. Other times. But even if everything she has done before seems to lead directly to this album, it still arrived as a shock. Even wincing against the danger of hyperbole, if somebody makes a better record in 2007, it will have been a spectacular year.

Leaps and bounds better, and yet a completely logical progression. It's not the songwriting, long Griffin's easy strength, though sure enough these dozen tracks betray the careful hand of an accomplished writer. And it's not even the varied musical settings, the strings, the horns, the near absence of electric guitar (though there's plenty that rocks.)

It's her voice.

Maybe this is simply a matter of co-producer Michael McCarthy's microphone choice and placement, or of mixing preferences, or of some other studio magic. Perhaps, even, it's simply that, for the first time, Griffin is co-producing herself. Nah, probably not. Children Running Through is all about Griffin reveling in the suddenly-- startlingly-- enormous power of her singing.

Power she uses judiciously. "Railroad wings", the latest in a series of childhood memory pieces, is tenderly sung, hushed, as if performed in the quiet of a very solitary place. So is its mate, "Burgendy Shoes", set mostly against Ian McLagan's understated piano lline. "Stay On The Ride", the newest among her bracing and sensitive songs about old age (the Dixie Chicks covered one) works into a joyous, nearly gospel lather. By contrast, "Heavenly Day" is close to full-blown pop, complete with strings. "No Bad News" (possible an anti-Bush tongue-lashing, and as easily not) is carried by firmly stroked nylon strings and vein-popping vocals.

Power she controls utterly. What could be a pro-forma kiss-off, "Getting Ready" ("Oh baby, I'm getting ready/I'm getting ready to let you go") quickly turns from an uptempo crowd-pleaser into an elegant and brutally honest dissection of a failing relationship. And yet remains a crowd-pleaser.

Power she shares, singing easily with Emmylou Harris-- neither of them drawing attention to their voices, only to the song-- on the circus short story "Trapeze". Throughout, she leaves abundant room for her ensemble (regulars, including Doug Lancio on guitars, Michael Langoria on percussion, and J.D. Foster or Glenn Worf on bass) to propel each song forward, striking exactly the right mood, framing each song-- and her voice-- with exquisite precision.

And her voice.... She could always sing, of course. But this... this is singing.

-Grant Alden

[sipowicz]

I can not wait.

[foggy]

I've been listening to Living With Ghosts a lot lately, I'm really looking forward to this new release.

[Sydneyfan]

I'm pretty excited about it. If the early buzz is anything to go by, it may be her best ever album. Have you heard 1000 Kisses or Impossible Dream, P? Both excellent.

[Quincy]

I've been enjoying Living With Ghosts a lot too recently. 1000 kisses and Impossible Dream are on my to buy list.

[Sydneyfan]

I've been enjoying Living With Ghosts a lot too recently. 1000 kisses and Impossible Dream are on my to buy list.

Of the two, I prefer Impossible Dream, ( Florida from that album is my absolute favourite Patty song) but they are both really good. Her other album, Flaming Red is an interesting departure. It's a rock album, with full band, and while there are some good songs on it, I feel her voice gets lost in the noise.

[Quincy]

I'd be interested to hear her backed by a full band.

[foggy]

I'm pretty excited about it. If the early buzz is anything to go by, it may be her best ever album. Have you heard 1000 Kisses or Impossible Dream, P? Both excellent.

I haven't heard either of those, no. I saw Impossible Dream at a local shop though, I'm definitely gonna pick it up. :upyours

[Sydneyfan]

I'd be interested to hear her backed by a full band.

She's backed by a full band on her other albums too, but on Flaming Red there are lots of electric guitars and drums. Some people love it, but I prefer it when her voice is the focal point. It's still a good album though and well worth checking out.

[Sydneyfan]

Another review, this one from Relix magazine.

Interesting how she mentions the problem of loud instruments drowning out her vocals.

Thinking that Patty Griffin should get more serious about singing is like suggesting to Buddy Rich that he ought to practice drums a little more diligently. Yet after weathering maybe a few too many nights on the road, doing songs that left her feeling less than fulfilled, that’s exactly what Griffin decided she needed to do.

Griffin s crown has always borne two jewels: her voice, one of the most distinctive on record, and her writing, each complementing the other. Yet on her new release, Children Running Through, her vocals are the focus as her writing scales down, sometimes to the point of feeling more improvisational than preconceived. To those who appreciate the spare eloquence of her character studies (“Tony, Christina” and “Mary,” from Flaming Red) and the dark beauty of her story-songs (“Florida” and “Top of the World,” from Impossible Dream), an uncomfortable first impression is that for all of the luster of its sound, something in this music is out of balance.

That’s clear from the opening seconds of track one, “You’ll Remember,” which teams Griffin with acoustic bassist Glenn Worf and some barely audible, brush-stroked drums. In just over two minutes, she expresses a message that doesn’t go that far beyond the title, though her delivery invests the lyric with several shades of implicit meaning. With this performance, the bare bones of the instrumental track and the skeletal lyric, are all she needs.

It gets even more basic than this, especially in songs that boil down to little more than an expression of emotion. “Getting Ready,” for instance, driven by an exuberant, churning, up-tempo guitar strum, more or less announces how great it feels to dump some loser who’s caused nothing but problems in her life. And “I Don’t Ever Give Up” says, again, pretty much what the title forecasts, namely that Patty Griffin doesn’t give up, though this time her assertions ride the momentum of John Painter’s emphatic string arrangement.

It’s difficult to imagine some of these songs holding up to the best in Griffin’s catalog; on the other hand, her singing stands more on its own than most of what she’s done since she cut her first album, Living with Ghosts, at Kingsway Studios in New Orleans as a solo, voice-andguitar demo. For all that she’s accomplished since then, that early effort does have a unique purity, which Griffin seems to pursue—and attain—on Children Running Through.

“The thing is, over these past two years I wasn’t enjoying some of the songs I’d written—and no,” she teases, laughing, “I’m not going to name any names. But I’d get out onstage and as I was singing I’d be thinking, ‘Man, I wish that note was two steps higher and eight seconds longer.’ I really wanted to have some songs that I could really enjoy singing.”

Inspiration presented itself in the form of some old records that Griffin dusted off and revisited. “I started spending a lot of time listening to the old crooners just sit on a note …and sing it loud! I began thinking about how you can be impressed by people who are great at writing songs while at the same time thinking that they aren’t really that great as singers. The more I thought about that, the more I started coming back to where I’d started, as far as writing songs that I could really let myself sing.”

By “old crooners,” just to clarify, Griffin means singers like Sam Cooke, whose sound was instrumental in her process of working toward Children Running Through. “I’d listen to things like ‘A Change Is Gonna Come,” which is hardly the most complex Sam Cooke lyric, but there’s a lot of room in it. He doesn’t try to cram everything he wants to say into it. He just picks a couple of words and sings them with emotion. That’s a good lesson in how to write as well as sing a song.”

It was a lesson she pondered even in the middle of her concerts, at least when not thinking about how she might have recast this melody or stretch out that phrase. “I’d be up there in front of the audience, thinking, ‘Man, I’ve got so many stories to tell.’ I was wishing I had something I could sing that people could dance to—songs that could carry them away—rather than songs that just told a story in a very specific way. That’s when I began thinking that if I could be a little less clever about the writing, I might be looser and more able to do what I wanted to do onstage.”

And so when she began writing the material that would wind up on Children Running Through, Griffin allowed herself to revert back to how she felt about making music for the first time—further back than Living with Ghosts, all the way to when she was a young girl in Old Town, not far from the Canadian border in Maine. Music, especially singing, was intrinsic to the passage of days and nights with her parents, grandparents, and six siblings. As the youngest child, Patty absorbed what she heard and learned how to feed it back through whatever holes lingered in the family harmony.

“And I used to put on records, like Linda Ronstadt’s Greatest Hits, Volume One, and let ‘em rip,” she remembers. “That’s how I started singing—really loud, even though I didn’t have the kind of body to sing like that. The thing is that, being a kid, I wasn’t at all selfconscious about getting up in front of people and singing loud. I just loved to sing. So as I was writing for this record, I tried to enjoy singing in that same way, with whatever I came up with.”

This didn’t mean that Griffin abandoned completely the narrative side of her writing. But when she does allow herself to tell a story on Children Running Through, her priorities remain evident: simplicity and the pleasure of performance are her most important goals. So it is on “Burgundy Shoes,” which fits into her catalog of story-songs yet focuses more on one golden moment than any flow of impressions or events.

“A couple of years ago somebody asked me why I was such a sad songwriter—so I decided to write something happy,” she says, smiling at the obviousness of the idea. “This was at least six months or even a year before I started writing the rest of this record, so it was the beginning of my ‘happy-song’ phase. I wrote it from the perspective of a three-or four-year-old child who is just so happy to see the sun coming in through the window of her bus.”

That image, intact through all these years, translates on “Burgundy Shoes” into the purest evocation of innocence in Griffin’s discography: a chant of just one word, “Sun! Sun! Sun!,” that in its elemental eloquence conveys a kind of joy, uncomplicated and uncompromised, that for too many adults is within reach only through memory.

“It was one of those perfect moments that last for about ten minutes,” Griffin says, “when you’re sitting with your mom or somebody really cool, even though there’s nothing special going on. Those are the moments you hold in your heart; they’re the greatest moments, really, of your life.”

To help her capture the ephemeral qualities she wanted for Children Running Through, Griffin asked Mike McCarthy to join her as co-producer. Though studio-seasoned, with credits including projects with Spoon, Lee Ann Womack, and …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, he had never worked with Griffin. For Griffin, though, this was all the more reason to bring him onboard, so that she could record her voice with the same freedom she had brought to writing for it.

“One thing I’ve discovered over the years is that my singing is getting more and more airy,” she says. “This means it gets sucked up by added instrumentation. That’s why a lot of people prefer hearing me with a sound that’s stripped down. But even if I’m just playing guitar while I’m singing, I usually hit it pretty loud, so it bleeds into the vocal. The challenge for Mike was to record me so that everything pops.”

Through extensive pre-production, which centered on an unusually thorough search for exactly the right vocal and instrumental mics, McCarthy and Griffin empowered Children Running Through to snap, crackle, and pop. Those details that you expect from a Patty Griffin album are all in place, from the gauzy/dreamy piano ballads (“Burgundy Shoes,” “Someone Else’s Tomorrow”) to the Emmylou Harris duet (“Trapeze”). But the differences are unmistakable too, and with them the evidence of Griffin’s willingness to step backward now and then, if that’s what it takes to keep from standing still. .

[Quincy]

She's backed by a full band on her other albums too, but on Flaming Red there are lots of electric guitars and drums. Some people love it, but I prefer it when her voice is the focal point. It's still a good album though and well worth checking out.

Shows how much attention I've been paying to that album, or her voice is that good.

[Sydneyfan]

I think she has one of the best voices I have ever heard. Although, I played the first couple of tracks from Living with Ghosts to a friend once and he said it sounded like a cat being tortured :\

[Quincy]

I'm listening to it now, am I missing the band or something on my record? Are my ears this bad?

[Sydneyfan]

I'm listening to it now, am I missing the band or something on my record? Are my ears this bad?


There is no band on Living with Ghosts. I meant there is a band on all her other albums.

Here's the new album cover.

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a312/cindydowling/PATTYCOVER.jpg

[foggy]

I think she has one of the best voices I have ever heard. Although, I played the first couple of tracks from Living with Ghosts to a friend once and he said it sounded like a cat being tortured :\

Funny how it works that way. My friend once played Jeff Buckley for someone who couldn't understand how Jeff got a record contract. They thought he was that bad. :confused

[Sydneyfan]

Funny how it works that way. My friend once played Jeff Buckley for someone who couldn't understand how Jeff got a record contract. They thought he was that bad. :confused

While I can understand how he got a recording contract, I must admit his voice doesn't do much for me either really. I guess it's all a matter of personal taste. I read a review of one of the Decemberists albums recently where the reviewer was genuinely perplexed at how anyone could listen to "the donkey voice" of Colin Meloy. And yet I think his voice adds a whole extra dimension to their sound.

[foggy]

While I can understand how he got a recording contract, I must admit his voice doesn't do much for me either really. I guess it's all a matter of personal taste.

Most definitely. I personally thought he had beautiful voice and really knew how to use it, but this guy thought my friend was pulling his leg and that it was someone he knew and was trying to pawn off as a great singer. I found that really funny. :lol

I read a review of one of the Decemberists albums recently where the reviewer was genuinely perplexed at how anyone could listen to "the donkey voice" of Colin Meloy. And yet I think his voice adds a whole extra dimension to their sound.

Oh, me too. You always run that love/hate risk when you have a unique voice, I suppose.

[Starlite]

I think she has one of the best voices I have ever heard. Although, I played the first couple of tracks from Living with Ghosts to a friend once and he said it sounded like a cat being tortured :\

Speaking of cats and voices, a lot of my friends think Joanna Newsom is terrible. I find her music rather interesting, but her voice really puts me off.

[Sydneyfan]

Speaking of cats and voices, a lot of my friends think Joanna Newsom is terrible. I find her music rather interesting, but her voice really puts me off.

I've only heard a couple of songs from her and I agree, her voice is a little off putting. The queen of annoying voices must be Kasey Chambers though, surely? That flat, nasally whine.....

[Starlite]

I've only heard a couple of songs from her and I agree, her voice is a little off putting. The queen of annoying voices must be Kasey Chambers though, surely? That flat, nasally whine.....

Not only whiny voice, but whiny lyrics too:
"Am I not pretty enough
Is my heart too broken
Do I cry too much
Am I too outspoken..."

[Sydneyfan]

Everytime I heard her singing "True Colours" on those ads for the World Cup Rugby I winced. She sounded like she had a peg on her nose.

[Quincy]

some songs up on myspace

http://www.myspace.com/pattygriffin

[Sydneyfan]

some songs up on myspace

http://www.myspace.com/pattygriffin

Excellent! Thanks.

[Sydneyfan]

Heavenly Day is beautiful. :upyours

[Sydneyfan]

Looks like Barnes and Noble are offering a special edition of the album with two bonus tracks. Too bad I already ordered mine from Amazon. :downyours It would be nice if record companies stopped making sweetheart deals with certain retailers.....anyhow....

http://music.barnesandnoble.com/search/product.asp?z=y&EAN=880882157623&itm=7


You can hear sound samples of all the tracks there as well.

[martyb]

"There is no band on Living with Ghosts. I meant there is a band on all her other albums."

Living with Ghosts was a demo tape, and too good to mess with. It remains the standout for me.

[Sydneyfan]

Has anyone got this yet? I'm still waiting for my copy to arrive.

[Sydneyfan]

It arrived and it's sensational. The reviewers who said she has never sounded so good are spot on. And she even manages to belt out some rock tracks without her voice getting swamped by the band on this one.

Trapeze, her duet with EmmyLou Harris, gave me goosebumps.

And another positive review:

Patty Griffin

Children Running Through

For years, I've told just about anybody who will listen that Patty Griffin is the greatest American singer-songwriter they've never heard. "Children Running Through" only gives me more splendid ammunition.

On her latest, Griffin takes another step in her bid to foil genre labelers. The opening track, "You'll Remember Me," is a tender jazz number, the hard-strumming "Stay on the Ride" is buoyed by an R&B horn section, "Crying Over" is a loping, sorrowful country ballad and "Getting Ready" is nothing less than full-throttle cow-punk -- her most rollicking, don't-let-the-door-hit-you-on-the-way-out rocker since she released the under-appreciated 1998 rock album called "Flaming Red." Even "No Bad News" is an uptempo, fiery gem with hard-charging drums and Tex-Mex-flavored horns. At their heart, though, these are folk songs in the truest sense of the word, absorbing America's rich musical history: country, gospel, rock, soul, blues.

Griffin's powerful voice has never been better, never more expressive, lingering on notes and phrases for just the right amount of time, cutting through the occasional overuse of strings.

Of course, it's Griffin's songwriting that shines above all else, producing images so sad at times that it hurts ("Crying Over," "Trapeze," "Someone Else's Tomorrow"). "We filed out of the churchyard, so cold it was silver," she sings on the mournful piano tune, "Someone Else's Tomorrow."

Somehow, though, there's a hopeful silver lining in this stunning landscape of melancholy that Griffin paints, a tribute to the enduring human spirit that strikes a nerve with listeners.

If "Children Running Through" isn't a masterpiece, it's as close it gets.

****


John Sinkevics

[Factory Boy]

I played the first couple of tracks from Living with Ghosts to a friend once and he said it sounded like a cat being tortured :\

WHAAAT?! Moses just kills ol' Factory. Simply stunning song/performance.
Hello again everyone. Missed ya! Especially sydders & foggers.:wave

[foggy]

WHAAAT?! Moses just kills ol' Factory. Simply stunning song/performance.
Hello again everyone. Missed ya! Especially sydders & foggers.:wave

Yay It's great to see you here, Nick! Stick around! :wave

[Factory Boy]

Hey foggy. I was shouting at you with kees in the RAA shoutbox the other day. I find it hard to make time to frequent both sites but I had a nice "We Miss You" email from Rob, so I thought I should make a bit of an effort.
I do like it here a lot & the new decor is attractive!

[foggy]

Hey foggy. I was shouting at you with kees in the RAA shoutbox the other day. I find it hard to make time to frequent both sites but I had a nice "We Miss You" email from Rob, so I thought I should make a bit of an effort.
I do like it here a lot & the new decor is attractive!

It is, there's been some nice changes. I missed seeing you around here, hopefully you'll stay this time. ;)

[Factory Boy]

Aww, missed you too! I will make a special effort in the future, promise.
Right now I gotta go as a friend just arrived. (yes, I do actually have one!)
See ya soon.

[Sydneyfan]

Nick!!!!! Come back :lol

:wave Nice to see you here.

[Factory Boy]

Nick!!!!! Come back :lol

:wave Nice to see you here.

I'm back! A little worse for wear. How are you sydders ol' gal?

Dammit, missed you. Whered'ya go?

[Sydneyfan]

I'm very well thank you sir. Especially since its Friday here and I am heading out to lunch with a couple of girlfriends shortly. Hopefully a long lunch.

[Factory Boy]

I'm very well thank you sir. Especially since its Friday here and I am heading out to lunch with a couple of girlfriends shortly. Hopefully a long lunch.

Ah, you're back! What did I miss while I was away?
Just a few more hours & it's Friday for me too. can't wait!

[Sydneyfan]

What did you miss.....hmmm,, let me see...

Basically, the site coming back up after Rob thankfully managed not to end up in jail and then just trying to rebuild it back from there. Rob and Hal have put in tons of new whiz-bang features.

Nothing much new from me, Will is trekking through New Zealand at the moment, work is the same as ever.....how about you?



Actually,,,this is messing up the Patty Griffin thread.... we should chat in the Shoutbox. Yes, I've become all anal since you spoke to me last, ha.

[Factory Boy]

What did you miss.....hmmm,, let me see...

Basically, the site coming back up after Rob thankfully managed not to end up in jail and then just trying to rebuild it back from there. Rob and Hal have put in tons of new whiz-bang features.

Nothing much new from me, Will is trekking through New Zealand at the moment, work is the same as ever.....how about you?

Yeah, I've been around after the site came back up but not seen all the new stuff.
Trekking in New Zealand sounds wonderful! How come you didn't go?
I've been really busy with various musical projects. Recording & gigging.
Work, also same as ever. Relationship breakdown in November, which is a terrible, terrible shame.
Definite plans to catch Ryan in the US this year, as soon as dates are announced. Will stay with the Rosebuds & hopefully, finally meet up with autumnstars. Maybe foggy too!
I see you've got the new Patty. I gotta get that.

[Sydneyfan]

Yeah, I've been around after the site came back up but not seen all the new stuff.
Trekking in New Zealand sounds wonderful! How come you didn't go?
I've been really busy with various musical projects. Recording & gigging.
Work, also same as ever. Relationship breakdown in November, which is a terrible, terrible shame.
Definite plans to catch Ryan in the US this year, as soon as dates are announced. Will stay with the Rosebuds & hopefully, finally meet up with autumnstars. Maybe foggy too!
I see you've got the new Patty. I gotta get that.


Nick, come into the Shoutbox.

That sounds a bit creepy, really...

[Starlite]

Heavenly Day is beautiful. :upyours

My favourite track on the album so far.
I had it on repeat this morning.

[Sydneyfan]

Its lovely. I'm surprised that she hasn't done more gospel-influenced tracks before really. Her voice is really suited to it. Trapeze and No Bad News are my most played at the moment.

[Starlite]

Another review/interview: http://www.smh.com.au/news/music/one-from-the-soul/2007/03/16/1173722722193.html

For anyone else who was wondering what MLK meant...
Up to the Mountain (MLK Song) was inspired by the eerily prescient speech given by civil rights leader Martin Luther King the night before he was assassinated in Memphis in April 1968. King said: "Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land."

[Sydneyfan]

That's a great article. Bernard Zuel was the one who got me into Patty Griffin - he praised her once in some article he wrote a couple of years ago about great songwriters you've probably never heard of. He also had kind things to say about Josh Ritter.