Album Review: More Than A Whisper: Celebrating the Music of Nanci Griffith

The untimely death of Nanci Griffith in 2021 came after a long period of declining health and retreat from recording music. Her final album, released in 2012 was described by Paste magazine as being ‘utterly shot through with vitriolic anger, disappointment, fear and dissent.’ There was an air of bitterness in some of her interviews around the time of that album, suggesting a frustration with the music industry and her legacy as a whole.

What is heartening then about this tribute album is the depth and breadth of the contributions – there are those who were her contemporaries and collaborators: John Prine, Emmylou Harris, Lyle Lovett, Mary Gauthier, Steve Earle but there are younger musicians here too like Molly Tuttle, the War & Treaty and Sarah Jarosz. She may have felt under appreciated but here is the evidence of her influence among those who matter – her fellow musicians.

Opening with a version of ‘You Can’t Go Home Again’ is Sarah Jarosz, who spent her childhood listening to Nanci. The song is a haunting tale is of displacement and exile from your hometown. Small town life is usually romanticised in country music but here it’s given a darker, more realistic, hue which Sarah conveys in her stark arrangement.

Despite his death prior to Nanci, John Prine makes an appearance on this record with his last recorded vocal performance on ‘Love at the Five & Dime’ with Kelsey Waldon. Nanci herself heard this one before her death – showing how long this project has been in development. It’s wonderful to hear his voice again, and together they bring a melancholy beauty to Nanci’s signature song.

The highlight of the album for me is Molly Tuttle and Billy Strings’ sweet version of ‘Listen to the Radio’. Just like Loretta influenced Nanci to write the song, so she influences others to honour them both. A beautiful reminder of the power of a great song to offer comfort and companionship to the lonely ones.

One of the most successful albums of Nanci’s career was ‘Other Voices, Other Rooms’ and some of the friends who appeared on that record cover her songs for this tribute. Emmylou sings a beautiful version of ‘Love Wore a Halo (Back Before the War)’ and Iris DeMent also appears on a haunting rendition ‘Banks of the Pontchartrain’.

Nanci’s protege was Lyle Lovett and his performance of ‘Trouble in the Fields’ here has a gravitas which suggests a real emotional connection with her songwriting. Her original had an airy fiddle that created lightness; Lyle’s version is darker, embracing the misery of the lyrics in his delivery.

The original version of ‘Gulf Coast Highway’ is one of those songs whose slick polished production style sounds awful to contemporary ears, so it’s refreshing to hear Brandy Clark take the bones of the song and make it sound like the classic song it always was.

‘Outbound Plane’ was one of Nanci’s most commercial uptempo songs, reimagined here by Shawn Colvin who makes it softer, quieter, sadder. Mary Gauthier was a close friend of Nanci and she sings a poignant version of ‘More than a Whisper’, the title given to this project.

Having never listened to Nanci Griffith at all before I began writing this review, I quickly became a fan. Reading more of her life story left me with a profound sense of sadness about the struggles that she had, and an anger really about all these nonsense ideas of ‘authenticity’ that seemed to plague her.

If the job of a tribute album is to keep an artist’s songs alive and at the same time invite you to appreciate the original artist’s discography then ‘More than a Whisper’ has succeeded on both counts.