Jared Dustin Griffin’s sophomore album – The Perseverance of Sisyphus – could be seen as dreary yet formidable. It is a brooding rumination on what happened in the past tense and what awaits ahead in the dark and cold days to come. On ‘Shovel,’ Griffin intones in a gravelly baritone: I’ve come through hell to find salvation / I’ve brought a shovel for when I’m done / And I have come to dig my dirt / It’s just the pain that burdens the hurt. This is a soft, wistful track about the end of a relationship, with Griffin’s character wishing he could have done more.
Past comparisons made between Griffin and icons like Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen can be made, but Griffin’s work stands on its own as well. Warm with yearning and steely with…