Sam Phillips, Solid State (Littlebox Recordings, 2011)

From her Christian rock beginnings, to her albums produced by ex-husband T Bone Burnett, and through to her present work, Sam Phillips has made a career out of doing things her own peculiar way.  Over the past two years, she has worked on an extended project called The Long Play, for which she has written and recorded a steady stream of EPs plus one full-length album available via subscription from her website.  Solid State is a more publicly available compilation of recordings taken from the sessions for The Long Play, and it shows Phillips to be in continued fine form after her strong previous album Don't Do Anything.

The music on Solid State is deliberately underproduced. Outside of a couple of tracks with backing from a string quartet, Phillips' songs are given a front porch treatment. Phillips' acoustic rhythm guitar is the dominant instrument on most of the tracks, with a light amount of accompaniment.  Her understanding of pop music styles from different decades has always been exemplary, even if she leans a bit more on the sixties than on other decades, and that remains the case on Solid State. If Phillips hasn't changed her style much in recent years, she also hasn't altered her high standard of intelligent, thoughtful, melodic songwriting. The album's best lyrics come on the song "What It All Means," on which Phillips sings over a string quartet. "So I've tried to simplify," Phillips sings, "but it seems as if that's what you do when you die."

Sam Phillips has been one of the most consistently interesting and enjoyable performers in rock for quite some time now. Solid State isn't necessarily groundbreaking, but it is chock full of good, straightforward pop songs.

Overall grade: A-

reviewed by Scott


"When I'm a Camera"

Top 10 CD's of 2008

Another year has come and gone, so once again it's time to go over my favorite CD's of the past year.

10. Danelia Cotton, Rare Child: A little funk, a little rock, and a powerful voice make for a winning formula.







9. Mudcrutch: Tom Petty breaks a bit from his usual formula, and the result is one of his strongest albums in quite some time.







8. La Rocca, OK Okay: These three Irishmen and one Englishman are superior pop craftsman that I expect to be hearing a lot from in the future.






7. Dion, Heroes: Legends of Early Guitar Rock: This is an absolute delight for people with even a moderate interest in 50's music.






6. Fleet Foxes: This highly touted debut justifies the hype.









5. Týr, Ragnarok: By combining heavy metal with folk music and a great concept, Týr have put the Faroe Islands on the musical map.






4. Anna Ternheim: Yes, the EP was better than the full-length album that followed. Ternheim just released an album of all-new material in Sweden in November, so look for it to reach these shores soon.




3. The Ditty Bops, Summer Rains: It may not be the list-topper that Moon Over the Freeway was two years ago, but it's still another solid effort from the charmingly subversive duo.





2. Sam Phillips, Don't Do Anything: Phillips has always been at her best when she's been at her most cathartic, and there's plenty of catharsis to go around on this record.





1. The Born Again Floozies, Street Music: Stubborn defiance meets great songwriting. Fly your freak flag high!







reviewed by Scott

Sam Phillips, Don't Do Anything (Nonesuch, 2008)

With a history that includes her past life as Leslie Phillips, the big-haired golden girl of 80's Christian rock, and an acting role as a mute terrorist in Die Harder with a Vengeance, Sam Phillips would be noteworthy for the basic oddness of her career trajectory even if her music wasn't that good. However, Phillips' insistence on marching to the beat of her own slightly off-kilter drum has resulted in some very strong albums over the past two decades. Until recently, the one predictable element on a given Sam Phillips album was the production of T-Bone Burnett, her husband. But several songs on Phillips' 2004 CD A Boot and a Shoe hinted that the marriage was unraveling, a fact that she confirmed on her subsequent tour. She really appeared to have been blindsided by the turn of events, but happily Phillips has resurfaced strongly with her new release Don't Do Anything, her best album in over a decade.

While Phillips and Burnett still seem to be on speaking terms -- she thanks him in the credits, and she did allow a song she wrote for this album, called "Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us," to also be recorded by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss on the Burnett-produced Raising Sand -- she opted to produce Don't Do Anything herself. (With most of the songs making a direct or indirect reference to him, it might have been awkward.) Starting with the opening track "No Explanations," with its ominous double-tracked lead-in vocal, dueling distorted guitars, and heavy drums unaccompanied by a bass, Phillips shows off plenty of skill in that role. While Don't Do Anything maintains the minimalist approach to instrumentation employed on A Boot and a Shoe and her 2001 release Fan Dance, electric guitars are mixed in more evenly with the acoustics this time around. The resulting sound incorporates as much of the power pop of 1994's excellent Martinis and Bikinis and the unnerving dissonance of her classic 1996 album Omnipop as it does the folksy cabaret of the two more recent albums, and the mix works really well.

In addition to "No Explanations," the album has a particularly strong run of songs in its middle. "Little Plastic Life" is a fun pop song, complete with a catchy chorus, about "the domestic dreams we try out on each other...and ourselves". "My Career in Chemistry" is an Elvis Costello style rave-up about the explosiveness of romance and the lingering effects when it's gone. Phillips evokes late-era Beatles on "Flowers Up," with a string quartet backing her up on piano. Over the years, she has been a rare performer who can wear the influence of the Beatles on her sleeve without sounding overly reverential, or like she's trying to be somebody other than herself. "Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us" is both a song about finding inspiration at a difficult time and a tribute to the legendary gospel singer and guitarist Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Phillips wrote it in a style that would have fit right in on her last two albums, but the song gets a bouncier, more festive arrangement on this record than it probably would have gotten had she recorded it earlier, and I think this liveliness makes Phillips' own version slightly superior to the version done by Plant and Krauss.

Some people might complain that at thirty-five minutes, Don't Do Anything is too short. I've bought too many hour-long albums where only half an hour is any good, though, and the really good albums are good as a whole. And this is a really good album.

Overall grade: A

Reviewed by Scott

To view the video for "Can't Come Down," click here.