Possessed with the same name as the late Sun Records owner who gave a leg up to the likes of Elvis, Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash, Sam Phillips is also the owner of a wonderful old-timey sound and gives the impression she might just be the type of gal who once got her heart broken in Reno, just to watch it break.
This eight album from the former Grammy winner is a revelation, a beautifully formed record that on songs like ‘Open The World’ manages to sound both seductive (“My dance was the only way I could confess”) and disturbing (“Life went on without me until pain brought the house down”) as it puts you under its spell.
Phillips’ voice is a woozy concoction of Kurt Weill via Tom Waits, while collaborator/husband T Bone Burnett (who has produced the likes of Elvis Costello and Gillian Welch as well as the O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack) enlists a band which provides the perfectly understated backdrop to wonderfully experienced lyrics about desire, despair and finding “the corners falling into life awake again”.
My new favourite female artist – and so much better than Norah Jones it’s frightening.