Patty Griffin: 1000 Kisses : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Patty Griffin's music is almost too straightforward for these times: Her songs are bone-simple, her lyrics come off like snapshots of the Dust Bowl, and her aching, slightly twangy singing is unapologetically old-fashioned. But Griffin, originally from Old Town, Maine, steers a course between Bonnie Raitt and Lucinda Williams, and on this, her third album, she warbles and croons like she's never heard anything sadder than these songs. She channels Patsy Cline on "Tomorrow Night" and delivers a devastating cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Stolen Car," but her own tunes are just as blistering. She belts them out with the conviction of both Indigo Girls but avoids the lyrical and musical bathos of that group on "Chief" and "Making Pies" by stitching tiny details of ordinary lives -- hands on machinery, an old family photo -- into sparse, extremely lean arrangements. Her voice is an amazing instrument -- powerful yet torn, riveting yet lost. On "Be Careful," when Griffin sings, "All the girls in the restaurants/Pretending to be nonchalant/Funny girls on the TV shows/Close your eyes and they turn to snow. . . . All the girls working overtime/Telling you everything's fine," the effect is overwhelming, and almost too poignant, possibly because she sounds like she's been all of those girls before.

PAT BLASHILL
(April 9, 2002)