While in college studying film, Grant Lee Philips helped form a moderately successful act called Shiva Burlesque, whose 1990 album Mercury Blues opens with ‘Who is the Mona Lisa?’. After many big releases as Grant Lee Buffalo (most notably 1993’s Fuzzy), and two offerings under this moniker, Philips is back with Virginia Creeper.
Three years after his last solo studio album, Mobilize, Philips begins this LP with an opener called ‘Mona Lisa’. Maybe he knows her now, maybe he’s completed some cycle as a musician, I’m not sure, but although this album is nicely melodic and somewhat atmospheric, it lacks the kind of spine-tingling quality that folk-rock really needs to be to feel complete. His voice is gorgeous, yes, and he’s called in some special friends to assist, including acclaimed Norah Jones engineer S. Husky Hoskulds and vocalist Cindy Wasserman. He covers Gram Parson’s ‘Hickory Wind’ beautifully and shows soft moments of slide guitar or country sensibility that work like maple syrup on pancake, such as on ‘Josephine Of The Swamps’ or ‘Susanna Little’.
But in its entirety the lyrics are not clever enough to give goose bumps (one tune opens with a somewhat calculated "Casanova broke you just like china"), and the song-writing is not quite to the standard of classic folk/country. Of course no-one says it has to break boundaries or be a classic, and it is a pleasant listen, but this also means it’s slightly unmemorable.