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SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: GRIFFIN HOUSE – RISING STAR

Griffin House

Griffin House
Rising Star 
Evening Records

After 13 studio albums, Nashville-by-way-of-Ohio singer-songwriter Griffin House is more “old hat” than “rising star” yet his latest album is titled just that. Paradoxical? Maybe—but Rising Star is shot through with forward-looking optimism, suggesting House is a man pursuing individuation, rising through an outgrown eggshell to embrace a new life.

The storytelling prowess in the title track and subsequent “15 Minutes of Fame” is entrancing. In “Rising Star,” through witty phrasing and a rogues’ gallery of country clichés, House tells the hilarious story of Joe Everyboy coming to Nashville with his six-string and a dream. House achieves tummy-seizing guffaws when Joe meets “Keith Urban in a button-up place/Tried to talk to him, got punched in the face.”

Rising Star’s middle languors in the shadow of “Cup of Fulfillment” which arises from nowhere. Imagine Mumford & Sons covering a Springsteen song written during an imaginary religious phase. Sensuous production and gentle, enfolding structure crescendo into spiritual catharsis more sublimity than dogma.

Following two confusing sonic choices comes “Change,” a duet with Joy Williams (The Civil Wars). “Change” won’t earn House entrée into the Poetic Gardens, but it’s a syrupy bit of dessert that lingers splendidly on the palate.

Rising Star has its moments, but it’s mostly comprised of blasé, unremarkable ruminations on life at almost-40 that wouldn’t sound out of place at a weekday open mic. Not offensive, not discordant, not inaccurate…not anything, really.



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SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: GRIFFIN HOUSE – RISING STAR

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G. Roe Upshaw is a servant of mighty Music in this life, all previous lives, and on into the next. He barters his sumptuous time for tinkling coins doing this and that for him, her, and them.
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