Patty Griffin at the Union Chapel

Patty Griffin 
Josephine Oniyama 
Union Chapel, 25 July 2013

The Union Chapel really has to be one of the most beautiful venues in London. On a hot summer night, it is beautifully cool and as the sun sets through the stunning stained glass windows it really is something quite magical. Into this otherworldly atmosphere a beautiful girl in towering high heels and red head scarf totters on stage and straps on an acoustic guitar.
She looks like Nina Simone and when she opens her mouth she sounds like Joan Armatrading and sings soulful folk songs that take interesting twists and turns. Josephine Oniyama is a Manchester singer-songwriter and her debut album, Portrait, came out last year although I must admit I had never heard of her before but she definitely is memorable, her songs taking in jazz, soul, folk, pop and even a little country but overall it's her voice that is the most striking thing. I'm sure we'll be hearing more of her in the future.

When Patty Griffin finally emerges from the vestry my first thoughts upon seeing her are "What a glamourpuss!" She looks absolutely stunning with her curly hair big and tousled and wearing a purple and white patterned dress complete with a red belt resting on her hips and fantastic high heeled red boots to match. She is tiny but when she starts to sing I'm taken aback by the strength and power of her voice: it really is incredible. Together with guitarist David Pulkingham she opens proceedings by launching into Waiting For My Child from her gospel album Downtown Church, which she tells us was recorded in a church very much like this one, appropriately enough. 

But tonight is very much about her new record, American Kid, her first album of new material in six years and wonderful it is too. I've been a fan of Patty's for years but in all that time she has only come over to the UK once and that was as part of Robert Plant's Band Of Joy (and apparently the two are now a bonafide couple, which is pretty sweet) and even then it was wonderful to see her and hear her sing with old Planty.
Tonight we get a duet from the new record that Plant recorded with her but with Pulkingham taking over his part on the excellent Ohio, sounding like a classic old folk song and beautifully filling the old church despite being just two voices and two guitars. Many more American Kid songs follow: Faithful Son, Wild Old Dog and the amusingly titled Please Don't Let Me Die In Florida, which she explains was a plea from her father, whose death inspired much of the new record.
Another song, Irish Boy, is all about an imagined night of drunken fun in her father's youth, while the genuinely funny Get Ready Marie, which I really thought was an old time comedic ditty, was inspired by a photo of her grandmother looking a little terrified and regretful on her wedding day but brilliantly twisted and told from the point of view of her proud-as-punch grandfather instead. Like the record the night seamlessly goes from pure heartbreak to pure joy and with the dimming lights outside and the candles flickering inside with the superb acoustics in the little octagonal church, it's a unique and wonderful experience to hear Patty Griffin sing there.

I'm also thrilled of course to hear some older material in particular Chief from 1000 Kisses, which she tells us is about an old Indian who used to walk up and down the main street in her home town when she was a kid and the rocking title track of 1998's Flaming Red, with Griffin's and Pulkingham's fastly strummed, chiming guitars sounding pretty magnificent together. But the best moment came when Griffin began to sing maybe her most beautiful and affecting song: Top Of The World, which just sends chills across the entire church and you can see people frozen in the moment as the song builds to its stunning climax. She ends the main show with No Bad News from Children Running Through, written, she says, "when I didn't like my president or my boyfriend", quickly adding, laughing "but I like both now!" I'm sure Plant, and Obama for that matter, will be glad to hear it.

There was no getting away from an encore because the standing ovation and thunderous applause would not have allowed it but thankfully they returned, ignoring all the shouts requesting various songs and instead giving us the starkly heartbreaking Gonna Miss You When You're Gone. And then she came full circle ending on another Downtown Church song, the sweet lullaby Coming Home To Me.

At the end Griffin thanks her new record company New West "for taking a chance on an old girl like me" and it is amazing that anyone would think someone as talented as Griffin, both as a vocalist and a songwriter, would be a gamble but I guess that's how it is these days in the record industry. That said they obviously have a lot of faith in their new act because they have so far brilliantly publicised American Kid, as it deserves to be, and brought Griffin at long last to these shores as a solo act. Long may the faith they are currently displaying in her last and, judging by the response tonight, I'm certain it will be well rewarded.

The beautiful Josephine Oniyama