“There’s secrets I don’t tell ever to myself / I just keep moving,” folk musician Patty Griffin sings to open her new album Crown of Roses. Some of those chambers eventually come unlocked, though, and her latest album lets some personal thoughts out. As always, her strength doesn’t lie in a simple confessionalism, but in connecting her meditations to broader ideas: family history, the world around her, and cultural concerns. Crown of Roses peers deep inside, particularly influenced by Griffin‘s evolving relationship with her late mother, but it also expands enough to let in any openhearted listener.
For Griffin, the “keep moving” idea nearly became the hard part. In the late 2010s, she battled cancer and lost her voice to the radiation treatments, prompting a stretch of existential questioning. She came back with a stellar record, just in time for the pandemic to hit. The period created some writing stagnation, and while she released the unexpectedly valuable outtakes collection Tape, her pace slowed down, meaning it’s been six years since she’s put out new material. That opening track, “Back at the Start”, feels connected to this slow period, as Griffin finds value in coming unstuck, in appreciating new beginnings even after you’ve metaphorically “prayed to just get rained out”.
“Way Up to the Sky” complicates that vision. It’s a simple piece, just acoustic guitar and Griffin’s soft voice, but it’s the result of extended reflection. The singer asks how she ended up where she is. What was the point of the movement, if this is what there is at the end of it? It’s a heavy question, heightened by the delicacy of Griffin’s presentation. “Born in a Cage” explores the complexity of time passing and its negative changes through the lens of the natural world. Here, aided by a violin and santur, she considers the loss of birds, suggesting the decaying environment around us as well as a harshness in our natural progression.
Those two tracks offer some of the softer side of Griffin’s work, but the eight tracks on Crown of Roses show a gift for versatility within her frame. “All the Way Home” adds a Southwestern aesthetic to the album, and its increasing intensity develops a narrative sensibility that suits the morbid vision. “The End”, partly through its chamber orchestration and partly through Griffin’s vocal, suggests that she might have something of the torch singer, or at least a theater showing, ready to come to the fore. Both of those contrast with the roots rock of “Back at the Start”, yet the album always feels like a singular piece.
“Long Time” comes from the “valley of despair” and has little hope to offer except in the urge to “pray a little bit harder” and maybe find relief from desolation. Robert Plant (who has worked with Griffin in the past, notably in Band of Joy) adds backing vocals. It’s a nervy song, and one that haunts after its finish.
The darkness finds relief by the record’s close with the pretty “A Word”. Those secrets Griffin kept from herself find some outlet as she sings, “A secret I had / I wanna share with you.” The key to moving on, it seems, might not be so much in closing up as in looking out. She finds the things she believes in, including the permanence of love. That love could be romantic or familial or some other kind, but it knows how to carry on. Patty Griffin knows how to share it.