In other words, she’s going with her strengths.
Where her previous disc, Fan Dance, was about the voice and the guitar, A Boot And A Shoe is all about the rhythm, sometimes employing two percussionists to the spare voice, guitar and (sometimes) bass and string arrangements. But even though you can dance to it, she still wants you to listen. Like a friend and contemporary of hers, the late great Mark Heard, you can tell she pours over her lyrics, sometimes filled to the margins with detail (“Open The World”) and at other times taking the Emerson / Thoreau approach, getting maximum impact from the barest minimum (“I Wanted To Be Alone”). Again paired with her de facto producer for life, T. Bone Burnett, Phillips' voice stays on top of the mix without unnecessary reverb and fluffy-stuff. When the song is smooth, that’s her voice stoking the engine. When the song requires coarse grit, that’s her too.
Getting back to the rhythm, the southern-jazz two-step of the second track, “All Night”, demonstrates the two-drum approach that will define the rest of the disc. Carla Azar and Jay Belarose are always complimentary and keep the bounce in the tunes, rather than spilling out into the traps double percussion often invite. On the track “I Dreamed I Stopped Dreaming”, Azar is joined by Burnett favorites, Jim Keltner (drums) and Marc Ribot (guitar) as well as the The Section Quartet, arranged by Patrick Warren. Still, the star of the show is Phillips, singing, “I dreamed I stopped dreaming and singing, and I was alone with you, moving and watching, we fell way beyond words”. There’s a subtext of loss in the statement, but at the surface, it is sexy as all get out.
And here is what is the most charming and dangerous aspect of Sam Phillips: she does it all to your mind with her songs. She doesn’t have to warble and work a song to death to prove her talent, no hamstrung histrionics necessary. Today’s overproduced Diva-ettes can’t thrill you unless they’re paraded half-dressed in the video. Their songs, when taken on their own, are as passionate and daring as shopping for pants. The vocabulary is stunted with hoary couplets like “girl/world”, “heart/torn apart” and the occasional cussword and demand for gratification. It’s kind of wonderful to know that there are still songwriters out there that do it for the sake of music, and Phillips most certainly is there among them.
Yes, sir. She’ll ask you to do some crazy, scary things and you will; you simply haven’t got a choice in the matter. Sam Phillips continues to perfect the art of seduction and treachery through song. Give up. Give in.
