Griffin sings them so delicately that the listener can't avoid feeling the consequences of careless behavior with fragile souls. Her performance on "Be Careful" turns those two words into an anthem, and not with a shout. It's not that Griffin sacrifices sense to sound - she's too good to have to make such choices - it's just that her music is so, well, musical. Griffin's songs are so good, in part, because they're crafted to be sung, a departure at a time when many vocals get croaked out as afterthoughts to tunes written as hangers for clever but cumbersome lyrics.
1000 Kisses establishes a new guise for Griffin's old persona and is a tour de force for a singer's singer, which would be true even if "Rain," "Making Pies," and "Be Careful" weren't among the best songs she's written. She's also stopped trying to prove she's a rocker, although she convinced the hell out of a lot of us with her second album, 1998's Flaming Red. She's much more comfortable on ATO, which is owned by Dave Matthews and distributed by BMG. Griffin no longer records for A&M, the arm of Universal Music Group for which she made four albums, two of which got released. Coming offstage, she glowed like a gymnast who had just nailed a difficult landing. She radiated enthusiasm back at her fans. Her phrasing's freer, her onstage demeanor more confident. You could hear it in her show at Jovita's during South by Southwest, where the local singer-songwriter debuted her new album 1000 Kisses with a performance that hushed the crowd, except for rapturous response between numbers. Something transformed Patty Griffin this spring.
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