From All Music Guide: Patty Griffin's raucous second album Flaming Red was a shocking departure from the critically noticed Living with Ghosts. It placed solid, searing rock & roll and big bad drumbeat up against the still developing authority of her voice. On Impossible Dream, she married country and her own brand of gospel in an intimate and musically seductive mix. The reason for stating the obvious is that the Mike McCarthy-produced Children Running Through is the moment Griffin has been striving for her entire career thus far, that place where she "arrived" in her own aesthetic and professional view, the album that cements the emotional and musical adventure of the former album and the clarity of vision, the seamlessness of the execution and the precision of the latter. In the process of recording, one wonders if it ever occurred to Griffin that this was such a magical moment, an album that both she had been waiting to make, and the one her fans, no matter how devoted, had been waiting for.

Smoky and...

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