INDY'S WEEKLY ALTERNATIVE NEWSPAPER HIGHLIGHTING ARTS, ENTERTAINMENT AND SOCIAL JUSTICE

New Patty Griffin record showcases her voice

Patty Griffin says one of her goals for her latest CD, Children Running Through, was to create songs that did more to showcase her voice.

Griffin has never been lacking before when it’s come to her singing. Over the course of four previous albums, she’s shown that her voice, which frequently sounds like a cross between Sheryl Crow and Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, has been one of her strong suits.

Still, Children Running Through may well be the best showcase yet for Griffin and her supple pipes. Songs like the spare ballad “Trapeze” (with harmonies from Emmylou Harris), the gospel-laced “Up To The Mountain (MLK Song)” and the expansive string-laden tune “Heavenly Day” give Griffin plenty of opportunities to not only showcase her tonal range and vocal power, but build subtle changes in intonation and intensity into her performances.

In creating the songs for Children Running Through, Griffin intentionally sought to write more concise lyrics that would leave more room within the songs for her vocal melodies to shine. For a songwriter who has been praised for her talent with words, this took some adjustment.

For the first time in her recording career, Griffin was coming into a CD without a stash of ready-to-roll songs.

“I’ve had a few times when I wrote big chunks of music, the late ’90s and the early ’90s,” Griffin said. “Between those two chunks of times, there were a few records where I just had a couple of [additional] things to write and I could fill a whole record in. I ran out of that stuff. I think that was a good thing.”

The first batch of those songs surfaced on the 1996 CD Living With Ghosts, the product of a deal with A&M Records. Drawn from demo recordings, it captured the music the way audiences in her home base of Boston had heard Griffin, in a solo acoustic format. (Griffin actually had attempted to record more elaborate versions in a studio, but when the results of the sessions weren’t up to par, she convinced A&M to release the original demos.)

Griffin then surprised many of her original fans with her second CD, the 1998 release Flaming Red. As opposed to the austere acoustic setting of Living With Ghosts, Griffin plugged in on Flaming Red and rocked out with fervor on tunes like “Blue Sky” and the title song. Meanwhile, she fleshed out mid-tempo tunes and ballads like “Christina,” “One Big Love” and “Carry Me” with judiciously applied full-band instrumentation.

After seeing a 2000 CD shelved by A&M, Griffin signed to Dave Matthews’ label, ATO Records, and returned to a sparse, acoustic approach on the 2002 album 1000 Kisses.

It was only on 2004’s Impossible Dream that Griffin began to bridge the gap between her acoustic and full band styles on a CD. The critically acclaimed album found her touching on a diverse range of styles, including folk, gospel, country and rock, while delivering what many saw as her strongest collection of songs.