Griffith’s Purpose Remains Steady

Singing the title song of her new album, “Clock Without Hands,” Nanci Griffith on Saturday at the House of Blues presented the image of a timepiece ticking on without revealing the time--a fitting analogy for the outside-of-time qualities of her own music.

The veteran country-folk performer sang about her West Texas ancestors’ life during the Depression. She sang about Vietnam. She evoked a hootenanny with a sing-along “If I Had a Hammer.” She noted inspiration of her songs coming from books, including “Clock,” drawn from a Carson McCullers novel.

Heck, she reads books, which alone puts her out of step with the mainstream today in both the pop and country worlds.

But if the handless clock has lost its purpose, Griffith’s remains steady. Backed solidly by her five-piece Blue Moon Orchestra (and for a few songs her precocious 7-year-old grandnephew Dakota Floater on guitar), she gave her nods toward the past contemporary relevance, most powerfully in songs from the new album relating to her recent visits to Vietnam and Cambodia for the Campaign for a Landmine Free World.

The experience has proven fertile ground in her return to songwriting after several years’ diversions with two “Other Voices, Other Rooms” albums saluting the ‘50s-60s folk boom and a live orchestral release.

The central new song Saturday was “Pearl’s Eye View,” a tribute to daring female photojournalist Dickey Chapelle, who was killed in Vietnam in 1966. Griffith perhaps lacks daring as an artist, the mid-tempo reliability of her detailed story-songs sometimes veering toward predictability, favoring consistency and comfort over the kind of sonic experiments that have made Emmylou Harris such a distinctive force.

But her roots reverence and disinterest in trends keep her ticking. She’s just not the explosive type.