Description
Don’t Do Anything is the seventh studio album by the American singer and songwriter Sam Phillips, released on Nonesuch Records in June 2008.
According to All Music Guide, “with Don’t Do Anything, Sam Phillips has struck out on her own with a work that’s among her most challenging to date, and it reveals that she’s held on to the gifts that have made her one of the most rewarding singer/songwriters of her generation while adding fresh accents as she follows her muse with commendable courage and clarity.”
“Don’t miss Sam Phillips’s splendid new effort, Don’t Do Anything, a collection that dances in her signature mystery space between darkness and light with strange grace, emotional candor, and winsome hooks…anyone who rues the scarcity of smart, serious pop music for grown-ups should snap up the entire Sam Phillips catalog.” [Boston Globe]
Sam Phillips makes the records I’d always hoped Paul McCartney would make, with haunting pop music and the perfect band: drummer Jay Bellerose and Erik Gorfain, who lends guitar and violin and banjo and mandolin and baritone guitar. Phillips is just about the best pop-music songwriter there is: I wish she weren’t so sad, but then her songs might lose their longing and their ache. [NPR]
To suggest that Sam Phillips is a complex person maybe an understatement. With this, her 13th album since 1983, Sam presents an art house ensemble of emotional paradoxes in the poetry of American folk served on a platter of simple grunge rock. Each track is a different picture in a thespian gallery that lends more to reflection than understanding. «My Career In Chemistry» initially sounds like it could be about recreational drug use, but then moves into personification of the drug to tell of relationship turmoil. The lyric that speaks of “rational explanations” thus appears ironic. Compare this to the contradictory illogical lyrics such as “I love you when you don’t do anything/ When you’re useless I love you more” or “outside the domain of your affective powers/ I had a souvenir from a trip I’d never taken.” Whatever the inspiration the complexity of human emotional turmoil is prevalent. Her song «Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us» features on the critically acclaimed ‘Raising Sand’ by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss which reflects Sam’s underground cult status and parity of songwriting skill. A challenging album from a challenging singer/songwriter though those longing for the lady to return to her songs of faith when she was Leslie had better look elsewhere. [Simon Eden, Cross Rhythms, December 2008]
> Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/us/album/dont-do-anything/281141186)
CD tracklist:
01. No Explanations – 3:08
02. Can’t Come Down – 2:00
03. Another Song – 2:15
04. Don’t Do Anything – 3:29
05. Little Plastic Life – 2:16
06. My Career In Chemistry – 2:18
07. Flowers Up – 2:28
08. Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us – 2:44
09. Shake It Down – 3:53
10. Under The Night – 3:06
11. Signal – 4:36
12. Watching Out Of This World – 3:03
Sam Phillips, NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert, June 25, 2008.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.