I somehow missed a couple of albums despite both being right up my alley and coming from two of my favorite voices anywhere.
Patty Griffin is a brilliant songwriter, capable of crafting a lyric and setting it to a melody that cuts to the heart. She’s written a host of songs that can burrow under your skin by introducing you to fully human characters, then convincing you to love them as much as Griffin seems to — from “Sweet Lorraine” to poor, damaged “Chief” to those world-forsaken children in “Poor Man’s House.” She has also proved herself a fine interpreter of songs — of others’ songs as well as her own — singing them with the same fiercely determined empathy that she put into writing them.
Griffin is one of those singers I turn to when I need some encouragement or some inspiration or to recharge.
Ashley Cleveland, on the other hand, has the kind of voice you want to hear if you’re warming up for a national championship game. She’s got a national anthem at the Super Bowl voice — big, brassy pipes capable of the kind of vocal acrobatics that American Idol finalists assault you with. The difference is that Cleveland knows what to do with that voice — putting it in the service of the song rather than the other way around.
You’ve likely heard Cleveland sing at some point without realizing it — she has a long and distinguished list of credits as a Nashville background singer, including in John Hiatt’s band. Hiatt said of her, “She sings like she means it. She writes like she means it. I think she means it.”
Both of these un-divas released albums in the past year featuring traditional Gospel songs. You can hear a few sample tracks at Patty Griffin’s website or Ashley Cleveland’s website. Or you can check out what the critics have to say at the links below the jump.
If you’ve heard either of these albums, I’d love to hear your take on them too.
Patty Griffin: Downtown Church
Slant Magazine, Jonathan Keefe
Among contemporary music’s most effortlessly, exquisitely soulful vocalists, Griffin is a natural for this material, bringing such passion and genuine grace to her performances that even a nonbeliever can get on board. …
Like the best gospel singers, she sings from deep in her gut, bringing a lifetime’s worth of complicated emotions into traditional sermons like “Never Grow Old” and “Wade in the Water” and, in doing so, speaking to the deep appeal in their messages of faith and redemption. It’s truly stirring stuff, and Griffin approaches it with both reverence and a sense of purpose that transcends the album’s basic concept.
Her choice of material sounds like it bears the strong influence of producer Buddy Miller. He has always championed the gravelly side of what we might call Americana or alt-country; but this, simply, is honest country music. Buddy seems to have recognised in Patty’s voice and delivery an earthiness that hasn’t been fully exploited in the past. Downtown Church is full of astonishing songs.
Patty Griffin’s first gospel album, Downtown Church, was recorded in a historic Nashville place of worship, with the aid of producer Buddy Miller and a band of veteran Music Row players, and it’s an unusually focused, contemplative record, even though Griffin’s choice of material reflects her status as a self-described “lapsed Catholic.” …
When Downtown Church ends with the lovely traditional hymn “All Creatures Of Our God And King,” the power of the sentiment and of Griffin’s voice carries its own pure quality, comforting to believers and skeptics alike.
At first listen—and this is another, um, blessing—the record sounds gospel-influenced, but not necessarily an overt gospel album. There are no handclapping choirs, string-laden hymns, or canonical shouts to glory, exactly. There’s no “Amazing Grace”, “How Great Thou Art”, or “When the Roll is Called Up Yonder”. Instead, Griffin and Miller chose several obscure tunes, a few of which are only vaguely religious, focusing less on orthodoxy than on spiritual and redemptive seeking of various kinds. …
If there’s any room to quibble here, it’s the fact that, by recording essentially a covers album, Griffin has sidestepped what makes her records so ardently anticipated. Sure enough, two of the standout songs here are the two that Patty wrote herself.
Christianity Today, Andrew Whitman
Griffin brings a catholic (small “c,” although the Roman church figures into the mix, too) taste to her gospel smorgasbord. The album features country and bluegrass classics, well-known and obscure African-American spirituals, a Hispanic hymn, two original folk compositions, and a hymn credited to Francis of Assisi. That’s as eclectic as it gets. …
Hank Williams’ “House of Gold” and the traditional “Never Grow Old” are stately but a little staid. But she redeems herself with the gorgeous “We Shall All Be Reunited,” an obscure country hymn from Carter Family contemporary Alfred Karnes, and which features a hair-raising vocal trio performance from Griffin, Emmylou Harris, and Shawn Colvin.
Ashley Cleveland: God Don’t Never Change
This time she’s applying her gritty Southern vocals to black gospel music, a dozen tunes made famous by the likes of Blind Willie Johnson, Rev. Gary Davis, the Edwin Hawkins Singers, as well as obscure songs whose origins have been lost over time. Cleveland takes the songs head on. … Her talents are best displayed on songs like “Denomination Blues” where Cleveland articulates that it doesn’t matter how you interpret the holy word, but that you need to treat other people right. Word.
Christianity Today, Josh Hurst
For years, [Ashley Cleveland has] been an unsung hero within Christian music circles, slowly perfecting a gritty blues-rock style that falls somewhere between Bonnie Raitt and Susan Tedeschi—though on this album, she’s rawer and more immediate than either of those artists. Joined by guitarist, producer, and husband Kenny Greenberg, Cleveland turns “You Got to Move” into a smoldering rocker, and the old camp spiritual “When This World Comes to an End” into an anthem to shake the rafters and blow a hole in the ceiling.
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