Patty Griffin: C or D?

I think her first few are all really great, but I do recall loving "Impossible Dream" a lot (it's been a while). Iirc there's a bit of a sonic crossover in the early days with the Emmylou/Lanois thing, which suited her too. Honestly I haven't listened to her last few, but she's the type of world class songwriter (like cohorts Buddy and Julie Miller) that I can't imagine ever putting out a bad record.

Also American Kid, dedicated to her father, with affecting songs and big rich groves and thickets of Americana production (Plant shows up, and I really liked how they sounde together on his Band of Joy) then Servant of Love, production getting wild at times---stripping it all down, even more dramatically, on the 2019 s/t: each one of those took me some getting used to, but always worth it. Speaking of Chicks covers, Maines did an awesome "Silver Bell" on her fine solo disc, which she didn't bother to promote much.

Yeah, Silver Bell--intended as her third album, but not released until 2013--is where I would go next if I wanted more like Flaming Red. In many ways it is nearly as strong--or at least it would be if I thought anything could compare to FR.

Yeah good call on Silver Bell. Glyn Johns did the mixing on the official release, if I'm not mistaken.

dow - American Kid is excellent and is my favorite of what I think of as her third phase (roughly, Phase 1: Living With Ghosts, Flaming Red, Silver Bell; Phase 2: 1000 Kisses through Children Running Through, Phase 3: since Downtown Church), but for newcomers, I'd start earlier in the chronology.

Just listened to "Silver Bell" - sold! Fantastic should've been follow-up to "Flaming Red", whatever cloth-eared exec rejected it deserves to be out of a job.

Maybe they were hoping for something more normie Americana singer-songwriter--it was a mix, of things, as I noted in 2013 Nashville Scene ballot comments:
Silver Bell, recorded with a 2000 release in mind, incl. originals beautifully covered by the Dixie Chicks, and the title song rings curvy changes for Maines' own Mother. Otherwise, it's mostly, um, art-rock, for lack of a better term: not the kind of rock constituting so much country these days, mainstream or indie. It's always beautifully tuned and performed, sometimes semi-cryptically/quirkily worded (not a complaint). (Motheris awesome too: a mother, in fact.)

Excited to announce our 2022 tour! 💕 We can’t wait to see you all again! We’ll be joined by @PattyGMusic* and @jennylewis^ at select dates. Tickets on sale Friday, March 4th at 10am local. https://t.co/YvCDw0ndHJ#CHX2022 pic.twitter.com/WNG6DOUUVg

— The Chicks (@thechicks) February 28, 2022

I have a suspicion they might as well change their name to the Chick$ for this tour.

One of the better Patty covers I've ever heard by an incredible songwriter in her own right. My partner and I chose the original for our first dance, so I'm admittedly biased, but this had me tearing up.

https://open.spotify.com/track/7dBndfMDtYGcU5J8U1Fv6D?si=f8e9d754f6044e12

reminds me---from Rolling Country:

PATTY GRIFFIN
TAPE
(PGM Recordings/Thirty Tigers)
Release Dates:
Friday, June 10 (CD, Digital Download, Streaming)
Friday, June 17 (Cassette)
“At some point in the pandemic, I was digging through my own music streaming to relearn some of my own oldies and found something that had been compiled (perhaps by a computer algorithm) that was titled as a ‘rarities’ or ‘deep cuts’ collection,” Griffin says. “I looked of course, and it was a pretty boring list for the most part. I later dug through some recordings I had done on cheap home recording apps, including my favorite one called TapeDeck which I’m not sure exists anymore. I really liked some of the songs. They were better than I had remembered. I dug around some more and found things from some GarageBand recordings, and then also a couple of things from an in-studio demo session in Nashville that were pretty interesting, including a duet I did with Robert Plant when we first met. It all seemed worth listening to. Back then I didn’t think so, but I do now.

“The sound quality on the majority of things on TAPE is pretty low, but the performances are what really matter to me. My home recordings are almost always my favorite recordings, as far as capturing a fresh, direct feeling. The shy introvert’s dilemma…I’ve always had a hard time creating that same feeling in a studio full of people whose talent is in sound quality. These songs have a feel you can only get when you’re by yourself at three o’clock in the morning. To listen to the bulk of these recordings, you do have to let go of the idea of good sound quality and just listen to the performance. I feel better getting some true rarities out there for people to listen to…not compiled by a computer algorithm."

Note the ones on Realistic: Radio Shack house brand. Humblebrag?

(Prob no prob.)

listened once. a nice treat for fans, to be sure, but deep cuts are usually deep for good reason.

Oh yeah, that self-titled 2019 album---from my Scene ballot comments:

Also, re xpost Sturgill's approach: even more, or more surprisingly, personalized retro---"bespoke," right?--is to be found on most of Patty Griffin's current s/t--it's surprising to me because she's usually got a very distinctive style of composition, and these spare tracks---usually just her and a guitar and sometimes a bass, a couple voice-piano pieces, acoustic probably, although there is "The Wheel, " a grinding combo blues shuffle---at first seem a little too familiar, received, aside from the unfamiliar lack of sonic density and burnished imagery. But after a couple of opening duds--despite the striking Spanish-style guitar, she keeps repeating the verse of "Mama's Worried" in a way that does not build momentum, and "River" is the woman-as-river bit that Howe Gelb did better---soon enough, her newly mumblecore-tending urgency has me leaning into my headphones, and for instance rushes the cool beat of "Hourglass," and rises through the Braziloid sunrise of "What I Remember," and hovers in the the canyon (piano pedals) twilight of "Luminous Places" and there's a couple near the end that are trademark PG-style after all, and really just about all of this is, mostly in a way I've near heard before (not that I've checked all of her albums). Certainly preoccupied and restlessly-rooted Incl. sitting down) enough for some forms of country (also I'd like to hear the Dixie Chicks/Courtyard Hounds/solo Maines cover some of these).

oh mang, finally listened to all of Tape, and it had me from the first notes, not requiring multiple schoolings like the solo s/t did. These are all a bit simpler than what we typically find on her finished product. One sounds like a thematic/POV variant of Springsteen's "Atlantic City," another resembles second cousin to a certain DeMent fave, and she may have thought so too, reasons for setting them aside, despite the fact that they actually *sound* like nobody but PG---overall though, wtf? Guess they just didn't fit, or in some cases, painfully fit too well with then-current preoccupations incl. projected albums.
But just sooo damn could---rec. also to fans of The Marfa Tapes, though this is more late night solitude than twilight campfire guitar-pulls duh.
She does have company over on the one where Plant shows up: a jazzy shuffle, with organ, electric guitar, bass, drums---kind of a boogie really, and I thought of John Lee Hooker from time to time. There's also a tiny, charming instrumental, "Octaves." Sending an insistent signal to somebody at sea, via tape haze (usually not noticable).
Here's where I listened (loud and clear enough):
http://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nULRv6QR2KSFxd35-4J6xLogSQvLie3eY

But just sooo damn could Also sooo damn good!

These are all a bit simpler than what we typically find on her finished product.

Vs. the way on some big album projects she's gone off into religious concerns which I don't always quite get (although "Mary," cogently covered on Joan Baez's The Day After Tomorrow is "covered in roses...covered in slashes," finding her (and/or Her) way through the story's edits, somewhat like everybody else.)
Also thinking of (more Scene ballot comments)

Patty Griffin, Servant of Love: Despite the title, nothing submissive about this 'un. Sometimes a dry martini prowl, sometimes more of a search party vibe, or burnished thickets of guitar, over the waves---then again, she's come to think of love, not as something heroic, but as "waves chipping at the rocks, 'til they turn to sand/I would have told you, but you never asked me." Umm, okay, maybe just as well...she started the album in a very present-tense, you-are-there sustained wish and waiting for a house on the coast…..call it Americana (nocturnal psychedelic treatments of tradition-associated frameworks, somewhat like Robert Plant's Band of Joy, which she sang in)...Also some of this seems pretty well suited for the latter-day voice of Plant, her ex. Maybe more than her own voice, actually; lots to take in here, anyway.
Later: she sounds weary sometimes, strong and resourceful always, calling in old and new configurations, always in progress, def. incl. descending melodies. So it always works out, poignancy-wise, and this may be a kind of break-up album, talking, working around it, w/o falling in.

She was great last night. Seemed more inclined to slightly odder recent stuff, maybe (a couple of times in this configuration she reminded me of Tom Waits), but she was funny and played more than a few showstoppers. "Mother of God" was the one that really got me, and that was interrupted by a flaccid microphone stand and a bunch of dick jokes before she started over again and killed it like nothing happened. Her guitarist, too, David Pulkingham ... that guy is nuts talented.

Blast, I should have gone. Missed out on Friday tix and didn't care to go out on a Thursday. I count "Mother of God" among my favorite songs of all time.