Patty Griffin - American Kid (2013)
Patty Griffin - American Kid (2013)
1 Go Wherever You Wanna Go 3:46 2 Don't Let Me Die In Florida 3:47 3 Ohio 5:12 4 Wild Old Dog 4:46 5 Mom & Dad's Waltz 2:55 6 Faithful Son 4:54 7 Highway Song 3:12 8 That Kind Of Lonely 4:23 9 Irish Boy 2:45 10 Get Ready Marie 2:59 11 Not A Bad Man 3:44 12 Gonna Miss You When You're Gon 4:05 Backing Vocals – Craig Ross (tracks: 6), Robert Plant (tracks: 6) Baritone Guitar – Craig Ross (tracks: 2 to 4, 7), Doug Lancio (tracks: 11) Bass – Craig Ross (tracks: 2, 10) Bass [Bowed] – Byron House (tracks: 7, 8) Choir [Drunken] – Cody (tracks: 10), Doug (tracks: 10), Luther (tracks: 10), Patty (tracks: 10), Roy (tracks: 10) Drums – Cody Dickinson (tracks: 1-4, 10) Guitar – Craig Ross (tracks: 1, 3, 7, 8), Doug Lancio (tracks: 2, 3, 5, 6), Luther Dickinson (tracks: 3 to 6, 10), PG (tracks: 1 to 8, 10 to 12) Instruments [Canjo] – Luther Dickinson (tracks: 2) Jug – Cody Dickinson (tracks: 10) Mandolin – Doug Lancio (tracks: 1, 4, 5, 10) Omnichord – Craig Ross (tracks: 12) Organ – Craig Ross (tracks: 6, 7), John Deaderick (tracks: 10, 12) Percussion – Cody Dickinson (tracks: 1, 3, 4, 6), Craig Ross (tracks: 3) Piano – Craig Ross (tracks: 11), John Deaderick (tracks: 10), PG (tracks: 9) Slide Guitar – Luther Dickinson (tracks: 1) Vocals – PG, Robert Plant (tracks: 3, 7)
American Kid is Patty Griffin's seventh album and her first of new material since 2007 – with a gap for the Grammy-winning gospel CD Downtown Church and her work with Robert Plant's Band of Joy.
After the deceptively simply opening track Go Wherever You Wanna Go, Griffin weaves a complex and moving tapestry about life in general and her late father, Lawrence Joseph Griffin, in particular.
There is rousing music – Please Don’t Let Me Die in Florida – that is driven on by musicians Luther and Cody Dickinson, of the North Mississippi Allstars, and Doug Lancio, and also the slow grace of songs such as Ohio (co-written with Plant and one of three songs on which he offers subtle support). Faithful Son has a stinging sadness. It's almost as Griffin has turned Henry David Thoreau's line "most men lead lives of quiet desperation" into a family song.
Griffin's father is the specific focus of Irish Boy and this ruminative track is complemented by a witty cameo song about her grandparents, Get Ready Marie. There is one cover song, of country singer Lefty Frizzell's Mom & Dad's Waltz. ---Martin Chilton, telegraph.co.uk
Centred around her father's passing, this seventh from the American country singer is a suitably ruminative affair, mixing her sadness with cameos from his life. Its gentle acoustic arrangements, full of intricate guitars and mandolin, come with only the odd up-tempo piece, such as the ringing Don't Let Me Die in Florida. Griffin reaches deep for the songs, taking her father's part as a young man on Not a Bad Man and the piano ballad Irish Boy, while the lovely Ohio, to which her sidekick, Robert Plant, adds harmonies, reflects on waters that are "softer and deeper than time". A triumph. ---Neil Spencer, theguardian.com
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