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Carrie Rodriguez - Live in Louisville

Luz Music

“Well you have it, you love it, now it’s your turn to shove it…I don’t want to play house anymore,” sings Carrie Rodriguez on her newly released live compilation album, Live in Louisville. Her soulful voice, accompanied by rousing fiddles, makes her point with grace and force. The tunes on the album come from Rodriguez’ various other projects, but the most colorful are those she takes the credit for writing.

“I Don’t Want to Play House Anymore,” “Seven Angles on a Bicycle,” (from the album of the same name), and “Never Gonna Be Your Bride” are among the more upbeat sounds on the album, but that doesn’t mean the rest are purely maudlin. The slower tracks on the album are as much soulful as they are haunting.

The eclectic sounds of her band would put her solidly in an Americana, that amalgam of roots music that revisions country, folk, and blues, but the unique twists and turns of her voice bridge the renewed attention to the genre with more traditional bluegrass and even the more sentimental songwriting of Jewel, Indigo Girls, and Julie Roberts (of country fame).

There is an element of the unexpected in each song, whether it’s a musical bridge or a turn of phrase, and the dusky sound of Rodriguez’s voice seems to make her the perfect candidate for a closing credits track on HBO’s True Blood—a new Grey’s Anatomy of sorts for launching the hottest new music.

Rodriguez can please the country in you while reminding you through her pertinent lyrics that you’re alive, you share in disasters and joys like the rest of us. And just as you’re ready to dismiss one track as too country or too slow, the next places you squarely in New Orleans among an impromptu fiddle fest or back into a dark, dank bar with a lonely mic.

Live in Louisville's variety—in voice and vision—is well worth a listen.

Review by Dr. Julie E. Ferris

Patty Griffin - Downtown Church

EMI

It's nothing new for an artist to try different genres of music, but not many can pull off multiple styles in an original way — let alone a way that actually sounds good. Count Patty Griffin among those rare musicians.

I've been a fan of Griffin's since I picked up her 1998 release Flaming Red, a compelling mix of punk, pop, and what was then referred to as 'alternative' music. Griffin's newest release, Downtown Church, is wildly different musically, but no less great a listen.

While some critics—and Griffin herself—have deemed Downtown Church a gospel album, it's much more than that. To my ears, it's an eclectic mingling of soul, blues, gospel, and a couple of songs those of us who have spent some time in the southern part of the United States refer to as spirituals. Griffin's voice is equally enchanting on each of the fourteen songs on the album, whether belting out gospel numbers like “Move Up” and “Wade In The Water,” or crooning the hymn that ends the CD, “All Creatures of our God and King.” Griffin's voice fairly caresses you on the album's lone Spanish language track, “Virgen de Guadalupe.” Though Griffin fluctuates between the somber and the lively, the album's flow and pure woman-positive energy is uninterrupted.

Recorded in the historic Downtown Presbyterian Church in Nashville—hence the album title—Downtown Church features backup performances from country and gospel heroines like Emmylou Harris, Shawn Colvin, and Regina and Ann McCrary. Even if this isn't the kind of music you'd normally tune in to, Downtown Church is definitely worth the listen.

Review by M.L. Madison