Consumer Guide Album

Nanci Griffith: Little Love Affairs [MCA, 1988]
For Griffith, the notion that the past was better than the present isn't just a bias, it's a worldview--consider "I Knew Love" ("when it was more than just a word") or "Love Wore a Halo Back Before the War" (WWII, she means). And with Tony Brown pushing her ever more firmly toward such marketable cliches as the raunchy growl and the pedal-steel whine, she's one neotraditionalist with a future. If you can forgive "I Knew Love"'s purism, first side doesn't quit--the regrets of "Anybody Can Be Somebody's Fool" and "So Long Ago" are as permanent as they come. Second side's got John Stewart as Waylon Jennings and real country songs by the auteur. B+