POP MUSIC REVIEWS : GRIFFITH SINGS AND STRUMS COUNTRY

With her big brown eyes and little-girl voice, Nanci Griffith is a real country doll, but her songs mark her as anything but a Nashville mannequin. Griffith is graduating from small-label releases to major-label MCA on her coming LP in January, and she laid out some impressive, folk-oriented originals in her show at McCabe’s on Sunday--along with some samples of anonymous craftsmanship and outside material of varying quality.

For full impact, though, we’ll have to wait for the Austin-bred, Nashville-based performer to hit the stage with a band that can flesh out and flavor her songs. Sunday’s solo format led to a sameness that gradually diminished her effectiveness.

Accompanying herself with serviceable guitar work, Griffith sang in a slightly nasal voice that wasn’t quite as pure and angelic as Emmylou Harris’ but is in the same ball park. She tended to let it get a little tremulous, at times threatening to do a Melanie impersonation.

The songs that worked best Sunday were the uptempo, heavily strummed ones that recalled Carter Family rousers--they helped counter the tendency of the slower songs and the stifling room to bring on a state of semiconsciousness. But she works well in several gears, from the delicate folk formality of “Love at the Five & Dime” to what she called the “punk folkabilly” of “Fly by Night.”

As a good denizen of the folk-country world, Griffith writes songs that support basic traditional values and that dissect life and love with simple, resonant images--in her case, a lot of geographical references, from Texas winds to New England storms. Her quick sketches and more probing portraits of family and friends have a clarity and economy--after hearing a few of them, you’re not surprised to find out she also writes novels.