WITH THE LAUGHING VOICE

By RICHARD CORLISS

Rock fans in their chair days can recall a distant dawn when pop music was about having a good time--fun fun fun for sweet little 16 at the hop. But that was before guys who knew three guitar chords were dubbed artists and, as such, had to suffer out loud for their muse. Consumers of pop have become so used to dirges about life's rottenness, sung by grungesters crushed under the weight of money, fame, drugs and women, that any happy music seems like ad jingles. Even female singers, traditionally dainty types, got the message. Doesn't Alanis Morissette sound as if she's performing at riflepoint in a gulag?

Nanci Griffith, prom princess of the country-folk school, dares to suggest that life is something we can get through--and get through more easily with a rousing or sweet-souled tune. Griffith, 42, might be doomed to good humor, with her chipmunk-cute face and perky soprano. In her new CD, Blue Roses from the Moons, she aims for direct emotion and musical simplicity. The bass-heavy Wall of Sound from her 1994 Flyer has crumbled; this is a live-in-the-studio set with a country feel and, among the sidemen, songwriter Sonny Curtis and the three survivors from Buddy Holly's Crickets. The team is relaxed and enthusiastic; it's the aural equivalent of a good mood.

You can tell a lot about a singer-composer's intent on an album by her choice of cover songs. The ones here, like Curtis' I Fought the Law, tiptoe toward depression, then poke it in the ribs. The broody lyrics of Nick Lowe's Battlefield ("All around there is desolation/ And scenes of devastation/ Of a love being torn apart") get swallowed and spat out by the jouncy banjo, the skiffle beat and the Jordanaires-style backing vocals, till the whole thing sounds like a minstrel show staged by Grand Ole Opry; everyone has a high time playing at misery.

It's not that people aren't sad, don't get kicked around, never die. It's that music can evaporate blue moods even as it atomizes them. The nostalgic poignancy of Griffith's Two for the Road hints at chances missed but also the pleasure of a longtime lover's company. Saint Teresa of Avila, a requiem for a childhood friend who killed herself, is addressed less to the dead woman or to those who miss her than to the saint who is expected to welcome her to heaven. Everything's Comin' Up Roses is a postmortem snapshot: "When I'm pushin' up daisies," the roses will still bloom.

Country music, even in the depths, is essentially Christian: it sees a happy ending, if not in this life, then in eternity. Death is a "sweet bluebonnet spring" ("When we die we say we'll catch some blackbird's wings/ And we will fly away to heaven") in the gorgeous remake of her Gulf Coast Highway, a duet with Hootie's Darius Rucker. His gruff baritone and Griffith's twangy soprano soar apart, then join in double rapture. The instrumentation--string quintet, Floyd Cramerish rolling piano, electric slide guitar--makes the song a pretty little anthology of pop's fine old tendency to synthesize, not isolate, strains of music. Listening in the Great Beyond to Griffith's salving ballads, God might tap His foot. Even Kurt Cobain might crack an enlightened smile.

--By Richard Corliss