Description
A Boot and a Shoe is the sixth studio album by the American singer and songwriter Sam Phillips, released on Nonesuch Records in April 2004. The album was recorded by Mike Piersante at Sunset Sound in Hollywood, at Stagg Street Studio in Van Nuys, and at The Village Recorder in Los Angeles, California; with T-Bone Burnett producing. Mixed by Mike Piersante and T-Bone Burnett. All songs written by Sam Phillips.
Sam Phillips has been releasing quietly beautiful works of poetry and slightly left field melodic quirk for near twenty years since she changed her name from Leslie to Sam, exited the straightjacket of contemporary Christian music and married then songwriter and now super-star producer T-Bone Burnett. Her albums have always been about taking on the powers of the modern age, the shallow, surface of fashion and technology, and delving deeper to find what has more meaningful and lasting and what is of more help in being saved from all that is diluting our living and stopping our dreaming. I guess her frustration with the Christian industry was that that same shallow surface spirit was alive and well there too only masquerading as sound and biblical soundbites. They were no deeper, however, and her work since her first album as Sam, 1988’s Indescribable Wow, has been about a much deeper salvation.
‘A Boot and a Shoe’ is obsessed with the other dimension of life “I want to walk deep” she states in the opening «How To Quit» and follows it in «All Night» with “Don’t look at what you can see.” The deceptively gentle and lovely «Reflecting Light» is a rallying call, a war cry to take on the way things are even if it means being perceived as a crazy outcast; “Give up the ground under your feet/ Hold on to nothing for good/ Turn and run at the mean dogs chasing you/ Stand alone and misunderstood.” These songs are constantly throwing up dilemmas about time and choice and freedom and doubt. “We’re not experts/ We’re believers,” she sings on «Love Changes Everything» and on «Hole In My Pocket» she goes on “I hear my heart breaking into faith/ Pieces of soul building up a mountain/ Moving seeds of doubt.” The final song is her end time apocalypse “when time opens the earth/ We’ll see love has been moving all around us, making waves/ Help is coming, one day late.”
If there is a better player with words than Phillips I would love to be introduced. Here quirk is maybe in need of acquiring but this album in its much gentler, stripped back, and acoustic disposition is as good a place to get the taste. If acquired it will transform your soul’s diet forever! [Steve Stockman, The Phantom Tollbooth, 10/18/2004]
Sam Phillips’ career arc would confound the most eclectic music fan. She’s ventured from formulaic Christian schmaltz to some of the least formulaic music imaginable, from a brilliant evocation of ’60s girl-group pop (1988’s ‘The Indescribable Wow‘) to ornate Beatles-influenced psychedelia and baroque arrangements (1994’s ‘Martinis and Bikinis‘) to stripped-down acoustic albums that revel in the open spaces and sparse, uncluttered accompaniment (2001’s ‘Fan Dance‘). She returns with ‘A Boot and a Shoe’, an album that, perhaps unsurprisingly, sounds like nothing that has come before it.
‘A Boot and A Shoe’ is propulsive, rhythmic chamber music; equal parts Tom Waits banging and clanging and Emerson Quartet stringed beauty. If that sounds like an odd and intriguing combination, it is. Carla Azar’s and Jim Keltner’s drums and husband/producer T Bone Burnett’s upright bass are mixed well to the fore, and there’s a driving quality, almost a fierceness to them. In stark contrast, the string quartet accompanying most of these songs (that provides the primary musical counterpoint to Phillips’ vocals) is subtle, whimsical, and endlessly creative. On the sweetly beautiful waltz «Reflecting Light» it conjures memories of an old-fashioned oompah band in the park, while on the gently swaying «Draw Man» they soar off into a gorgeous cacophony suggesting Jimi Hendrix and bombs bursting in air.
As always, Phillips’ lyrics are enigmatic and provocative, surreal dreamscapes that probe the intersection of faith and doubt, love both human and divine. “I was broken when you got me/ With holes that would let the light through,” she sings on the album opener «How to Quit», and it’s hard to escape the spiritual connotations. On «If I Could Write», Phillips is more terrestrial-focused, musing on the ebb and flow of marriage and commitment. As is her wont, she slips in a not-so-subtle dig at the Christian music industry that at one time longed to crown her Jesus’ Favorite Pop Princess: “Camera can’t find me/ I’m officially astray,” she sings. “When no one’s listening I have so much to say.”
And she does. Some listeners may grouse about the length of this album (a brief 34 minutes), but there is absolutely no filler here, and the songs open up new vistas of nuance and meaning with repeated listenings. ‘A Boot and A Shoe’ will appeal equally to fans of adventurous adult alternative music or fans of contemplative, spiritually oriented songcraft. Either way, it’s a kick. [Andy Whitman, Paste Magazine, June 2004]
> Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/a-boot-and-a-shoe/79301839)
CD tracklist:
01. How to Quit – 2:27
02. All Night – 4:01
03. I Dreamed I Stopped Dreaming – 1:52
04. Open the World – 2:18
05. Red Silk 5 – 2:28
06. Reflecting Light – 3:17
07. Infiltration – 2:15
08. Draw Man – 3:37
09. I Wanted to Be Alone – 2:16
10. Love Changes Everything – 3:11
11. If I Could Write – 2:18
12. Hole In My Pocket – 1:24
13. One Day Late – 3:12
Note: Jewelcase comes housed in a slipcover. A 20th Anniversary Edition was re-issued under license from Nonesuch Records by Omnivore Recordings in 2024 on both CD and 12-inch vinyl LP.
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