In a strict linear universe where time was not problematized by the ad hoc release schedules of US and UK imports and exports, this would actually predate the release of March’s third album, Virginia Creepers and come just one year after the critically acclaimed ‘Mobilize’ release of 2001. And listening to it, it makes a whole lot more sense that way, than this.
If March’s Virginia Creepers album was a bit of a slow-burner, this album has been practically taken off the heat and left to bake in the incremental glow of global warming. Accompanied only by the simplest and barest of instrumentation: an acoustic guitar, occasional harmonica, occasional glass bottle, occasional piano and only the very occasional harmony vocal. In fact, by the time penultimate track ‘St. Expedite’ comes round, the faint purr of a Hammond organ and carelessly tinkling piano seem extravagant by comparison. The voice is lighter, the spirit more blithe but the songs remain pure Phillips: endlessly probing, steeped in pastoral imagery and resting on clouds of pure fancy. ‘Heavenly’ waltzes lazily into a warm and beautiful sigh, ‘Flamin’ Shoe’ courts the domestic blue-collar blues and spiritual therapy of Springsteen’s ‘Thunder Road’ whilst ‘Lonesome Serenade’ offers a momentary glimpse of the eternal sunshine of the soul.
Recorded over the course of three days in October 1999 is, by his own admission, a Phillips ‘in the dark’, a Phillips ‘in the basement’ – a sparse and solitary work that more than adequately reflects the intensely private bent of the recording and writing process; a peek, no less into the diary of an artist.
‘Sometimes a sketch says more than a mural’. And you can’t argue with that..