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Sam Phillips
A Boot and a Shoe
(Nonesuch)
The Music Box's #5 album of 2004
First Appeared in The Music Box, July 2004, Volume 11, #7
Written by John Metzger
Since joining the Nonesuch family, Sam Phillips has launched what is
essentially her third career in the music business. Her first incarnation came
when she recorded contemporary Christian pop songs under her given name Leslie
Phillips. As she grew more intrigued with the complexities of life and began to
view the world in varying shades of grey, however, she shed her single-sided
spiritual subtexts, adopted her childhood nickname, and recast herself as a
secular performer whose lush soundscapes frequently recalled those of The
Beatles. Although she became the darling of rock critics around the globe, her
audience remained relatively small, and on her 2001 outing Fan Dance, she
once again altered course, this time embracing the restraint and subtlety of
acoustic-oriented, folk-based arrangements.
Were it not for the fact that Phillips appeared abundantly comfortable in her
new guise, one might have been tempted to view the transformation as a bit of
premeditated bandwagon jumping, especially given the fact that her long-time
producer and husband T-Bone Burnett was also the driving force behind the
blockbuster O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack. Yet, her most recent
outing A Boot and a Shoe further strengthens the notion that this is
precisely where she belongs, and it should quell any lingering doubts about the
seriousness of her bold, new direction, even as hints of her past continue to
flicker within her work.
If anything, Phillips has perfected the quaint, creaking echoes of Fan
Dance as well as the art-pop incursions that, over the course of the past
decade, have bubbled on occasion through her songs. As a result, the baker’s
dozen of impressionistic vignettes about love, loss, and desire through which
she saunters seductively on A Boot and a Shoe are nothing short of
entrancing. With a minimalist approach, the instrumentation frequently amounts
to little more than an atmospheric whisper as her warm vocals pour over her
sublime melodies with primal intimacy. Like some strange, whiskey-soaked
conclave among Tom Waits, The Beatles, and Kurt Weill set amidst the cigarette
haze of an after-hours nightclub, the album floats dreamily along at an
economical 34-minute pace, offering equal parts strength and vulnerability
within its fragile, humanistic refrains. It’s an honest, heartfelt, and quietly
compelling endeavor — the type of unassuming affair that slowly seeps beneath
the surface of one’s skin as it waltzes between things carnal and spiritual —
but most importantly, Sam Phillips has never sounded better nor has she ever
made her point quite so candidly. 
A Boot and a Shoe is available from Amazon.com.
To order, Click Here!
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Ratings
1 Star: Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!
Copyright © 2004 The Music Box
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