Patty Griffin has long been one of my favorite singer-songwriters, but her last album, 2007′s Children Running Through, disappointed me. Smothered by overly lush arrangements and inaccessible song structures, it sounds like Griffin got in the studio and started thinking too much, like she started making dry, intellectual choices about how her music should evolve. This is a problem, since I listen to her music for its  no-bullshit assault on my heart.

This happens to a lot of singer-songwriters: They break through with raw, unadorned material—as Griffin did with 1996′s mind-boggling acoustic album Living With Ghosts—but as they evolve, they trade simplicity for sonic experiments and a twelve-minute song without a chorus.  Sometimes this works out okay (Fiona Apple, Ryan Adams). More often, however, it results in tiresome self-indulgence (Ani DiFranco, R.E.M.)

When I “lose” an artist this way, I always hope we’ll reconnect some day. It happened with Dar Williams, who bounced back from the soggy Beauty of the Rain with two of her best albums, and with her new album Downtown Church, it has happened with Patty Griffin. (You can listen to samples here.)

A collection of gospel and religious songs (both originals and covers), the album really was recorded in a church in downtown Nashville. It features guest vocals from gospel group The Fairfield Four, as well as alt-folk perennials like Emmylou Harris, Shawn Colvin, and Buddy and Julie Miller.

Mostly importantly, the album features the Patty Griffin I was missing: Immediate, emotional, unadorned. It’s like she tried on achoir robe, decided she looked amazing, and then just let go. No thinking, just feeling, singing, and hollering.

Now, obviously there’s craft on this album. Griffin and company didn’t just sit down and improvise on some magical afternoon. But you don’t sense their hard work.

You do sense Griffin’s complex relationship to religion. For every song about the power of faith, there’s a track about death, sadness, and anger. The balance makes the album feel honest, because let’s face it… religion brings up contradictory responses in almost everyone.

My favorite tracks are “If I Had My Way,” a lively traditional song that lets Griffin shout about tearing a house down, and “Little Fire,” a mid-tempo original with excellent lyrics and Emmylou Harris.

And then there’s “Waiting for My Child,” a cover of a Sullivan Pugh song about a woman trying to cope with her missing son. Is he dead? Or just gone? Hard to say… but the pain is clear. Griffin brings vivid ache to lines like, “Oh, my child may be somewhere on his sick bed with no one to rub his aching head. Oh, my child may be somewhere in some lonely jail with no one there to go his bail.”

This song alone would have brought me fully into Griffin’s church, but it’s just one of the testaments to her new album’s power.