#Patty Griffin #folk #folk rock #Americana #country folk #alt-country #contemporary folk #alternative folk #singer-songwriter
1996 was one heck of a year for American roots music. You had Johnny Cash recording Unchained, possibly the greatest album of his long, long career, with Rick Rubin and Tom Petty. Outlaw country legend Steve Earle telling the world I Feel Alright after a long bout of drug addiction. Wilco announcing their arrival as a major player on the scene with sophomore album Being There. Jon Spencer and the Blues Explosion’s punk, techno, and blues-tinged rock album Now I Got Worry and their collaboration with the great R.L. Burnside on his punk, techno, and rock-tinged blues album A Ass Pocket of Whiskey. The Australian Nick Cave filling traditional American songs with overwhelming dread in his masterpiece Murder Ballads, and 16 Horsepower taking folk tradition to even darker places in the apocalyptic Sackcloth ’n’ Ashes. You’d think it’d be hard to stand out in the midst of all that, but the most powerful of them all was a debut album by a slight, unassuming New England divorcee.
Patty Griffin’s story plays out like a real-life version of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, with Griffin taking the end of her marriage as a catalyst to pursue her dream of musical stardom. She sent a demo tape of just her and a guitar to A&M Records. Superproducer/Chic frontman Nile Rodgers loved it, but he was unsatisfied with all the attempts to clean it up for mass consumption. So in the end, he just went ahead and released Griffin’s demo tape unedited. Nile Rodgers is not exactly a man who’s known for minimalism, so when he makes a decision like that, you know it means something. And he was exactly right. You can’t improve on a record that lands in your office already perfect. Living with Ghosts gets at what draws people to folk music. That age-old power of sitting in the same room with a musician around a hearth or campfire, nothing standing between you and the music.
For reasons known only to my parents, I came to Living with Ghosts years after discovering their collection of Griffin’s later, more polished albums — the oldest Griffin record they owned is 2002’s 1000 Kisses, so apparently they didn’t know about her before then and took years to cycle back to the beginning. Either way, Living with Ghosts was a revelation. Griffin evolved into a refined, motherly figure on her later albums. Living with Ghosts is the farthest thing from that. This is a pure, unadulterated howl of youthful rage and despair. Griffin’s proven she can belt like a soul diva, but there’s nothing in her catalog like the banshee wail she unleashes here. Maybe she never could unleash it again. She screams with so much power on this album it may have scraped her vocal cords raw. But Griffin’s incredible range is already present here. Living with Ghosts opens with a scream, and it ends with a whisper.
Living with Ghosts draws from the experience that led to its creation, most explicitly on “Let Him Fly.” That song, like “Time Will Do the Talking” regards Griffin’s dying relationship from a distance, from the perspective of someone with the wisdom to regard the inevitable with serene acceptance. But that’s not the mood at all on the raw, assaultive breakup songs “You Never Get What You Want” and “Every Little Bit.” “You Never Get What You Want” opens with Griffin sneering “You first found me in my holding pen/Stopped to take a look and stuck your finger in/I bit one off and you came back again and again.” It’s the kind of thing that could sound try-hard coming from a lesser artist, especially one doing such a total 180 from the persona Griffin projects for most of the album, but she hisses it out with such venom you have no choice to believe it. “Every Little Bit” gets at the same effect from the opposite angle, letting Griffin’s rage simmer through a husky, almost whispered vocal in the chorus, making the moment Griffin repeats the title, building in frenzy until words become insufficient and she starts screaming wordlessly land like an atom bomb. Both tracks make the most of Griffin’s limited resources as she plays the guitar subtly off key to create a dark, maddening mood. Near the end of “You Never Get What You Want,” her rage seems to boil over and the steady backing descends into frantic strumming like the acoustic-guitar equivalent of banging on the keys.
From: https://scottsm589.medium.com/a-shout-from-the-heart-patty-griffins-living-with-ghosts-304dcde3ee07
A singer and songwriter whose literate, impressionistic storytelling and richly evocative melodies have made her one of the most respected artists in the contemporary folk community, Patty Griffin is also a superb vocalist who sings of the human heart and soul with a passion that's palpable but never histrionic. Most comfortable working outside the major-label system, Griffin went from performing in Boston coffee houses to national acclaim with 1996's Living with Ghosts, a debut album drawn from her solo acoustic demo recordings. While she would explore more full-bodied arrangements on 1998's Flaming Red and 2002's 1000 Kisses, her work always expresses a powerful emotional intimacy. From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/patty-griffin-mn0000022348/biography
