Living With Ghosts

It's not surprising that Living With Ghosts, the first Patty Griffin album, has all the immediacy and intimacy of a bunch of demos knocked up by a songwriter during those brief early moments when the songs are still vibrantly new and exciting, zipping around in her brain like atoms in a molecule that's about to tear itself apart. After all, a bunch of demos is exactly what it is. Recorded back in 1996, the rootsy young Bangor, Maine singer-songwriter used these minimal acoustic guitar and voice recordings to score a publishing contract but, fortunately for anybody who loves nothing better than a good song well sung, they were considered good enough to release in their raw state. Comparisons to Bruce Springsteen crop up in her press reviews, but she's really somewhere in between Bonnie Raitt and Lucinda Williams, sparky and sincere, honest and uncomplicated. Although lacking the production values and country-rock band arrangements of her later albums, songs like "Let Him Fly" and "Every Little Bit" need nothing more than Griffin gives them here. --Johnny Black