Austin’s Patty Griffin has always branded her work with a certain melancholic restraint, but Children Running Through, released earlier this year, changed that: She loosened up, let the music flow, and scored a real triumph. On the bitterly cold February night of the album’s release in New York, Griffin and band taped a concert DVD, Patty Griffin: Live From the Artists Den (ATO), at a former synagogue on the Lower East Side. The candlelit setting is breathtaking, the music even more so. The band shows excellent form, but Griffin’s voice is the real star, steering song after song to magnificent heights. Among the many standouts: a sumptuous reading of “Get Yourself Another Fool.”
