Children Running Through

The career of Patty Griffin resembles the rollercoaster

Patricia Jeanne (Patty) Griffin was born in Maine near the Canadian border. The youngest of seven children, Griffin's childhood was full of music, as her mother and grandmother were both fond of singing. In addition to listening intently to the Beatles, Griffin was fascinated by the music of Bruce Springsteen and Rickie Lee Jones. Griffin bought her first guitar at the age of 16, began writing songs while still in high school and soon started playing with a cover band called Patty & The Executives, but she was too shy to make much of an effort to perform in public. It seems that the career of Patty Griffin has been a rollercoaster. After spending two years in Florida, Griffin moved to Boston in 1985, where she got married and took on odd jobs. Soon after she began playing shows around Boston, Griffin recorded a series of demos in her apartment and soon attracted the attention of A&M Records. The result was her 1996 debut release Living With Ghosts, which won widespread critical acclaim and won Griffin the beginnings of a passionate and devoted fan following. Griffin's second album, Flaming Red, was released in 1998. Both records displayed the poetic lyricism, bluesy alto vocals, and melodic guitar picking that defined her style and brought her admiration. 1000 Kisses was the first album Patty Griffin made for ATO Records, which earned a Grammy nomination in the Best Contemporary Folk Album category. Artists such as Lisa Germano, Emmylou Harris, and Buddy & Julie Miller joined Griffin for the recording of her fourth album, Impossible Dream, which appeared in April 2004. Almost three years later, Children Running Through was released.

Summation of the previous achievements

Patty Griffin's new album Children Running Through continues the remarkable creative evolution that's quietly established Griffin as a vital and singular musical force. She begins with You’ll Remember, a modern spiritual constructed in near silence, where her enchanting voice as if echoing off the cathedral walls, making the music more gentle and full of positive energy and creating the mysterious atmosphere for the whole album. Getting Ready is a burning, snaky rockabilly tune for the 21st century. In it, one can hear the energy of Johnny Burnette and the punk rock determinism of the early Pretenders. This is a song of self-determination and the acknowledgement of emotional and sexual power of our humanity. Griffin embraces her country roots on Trapeze, a ghostly duet with Emmylou Harris that uses circus imagery to explore the thin line between fearlessness and stupidity. We can find her own testament in I Don't Ever Give Up, a song - ushered in quietly by percussion and an acoustic guitar - about determination in the face of discouragement, error and downright oppression. On this album Griffin is using elements from her favorite genres such as jazz, classic and modern folk, gospel, R&B, Americana. Up To The Mountain (MLK Song) is a gospel number based on the "I Have a Dream" speech of Martin Luther King. All of Griffin's previous albums have merit, all of them are fine works in and of themselves, but Children Running Through is the kind of summation of an arrival. Griffin is the mature, fully in control artist here; she knows what she wants and she knows how to get there. Her songwriting now is wiser, her singing is stronger and more confident, and her manner of illustration is more enchaining.

One of the most claiming artists

Now Patty Griffin is one of the most claiming artists not only in the USA, but also all over the world. Her album Children Running Through has already become one of the most fascinating records from the beginning of this year. The "New York Times" has called Griffin's music "enthralling” and the editor Grant Alden hails: "Every other record she has made - and most of them are quite good - seems to have been a preamble to this work, by leaps and bounds the best of her career….if somebody makes a better record in 2007, it will have been a spectacular year." Griffin herself notes that this time she placed less emphasis upon the words that she is singing, opting instead to accentuate the manner in which she is performing. The result is that Children Running Through is the most immediately gratifying (but no less poignant) outing that Patty Griffin has ever made. Finally, this recording, like Van Morrison's Moondance, Emmylou Harris' Luxury Liner, signals not the arrival of a great artist - there are so few these days - but the fully formed artist at the height of her creative and demonstrative power.