There are voices that you can often trace back to moments that define your life, creative or how you have grown as a human. The voice of Glen Phillips has been a constant thread in both my creative life and my day to day (I mean, I have one of the guy’s lyrics engraved inside my wedding band). For as long as I can remember songs like “Fall Down”, “All I Want” and of course “Walk on the Ocean” gave me a desire to be a singer and songwriter, even before I owned an instrument on which to write those songs. Winter Pays For Summer was the record I spun most in my college days, and songs off of Abulum like “Drive By” and ‘Train Wreck” were constant covers in my own sets when I was first exploring playing out when we moved back to Boston from school. Phillips had this larger than life personality in his voice to me, while his lyrical content was grounded and somehow perfectly-imperfectly human. It made it ok to sing with a sweet and honest tone but write words that may be downtrodden or harsh. His voice has a genuine, vulnerability feeling to it. I think that is what has always drawn me into Phillips’ music, its that realness-heart on his sleeve nature that makes him, and his music, incredibly approachable. In a way he is your voice, and the relatability of his words and soft spoken nature has always spoken to me.
The singer-songwriter’s latest, Swallowed By The New, has a distinct familiarity to it. Phillips recognizable tone and timbre, the natural breaking of his enters and releases across the 11 tracks, but there is a deeper exploration in themes contained in the chorus and verses of each tune. At times bleak and hopeless, but morphing into some sense of hope. Lyrically, SBTN is a study in the deep recesses of human emotion that spring forth from loss but also the optimism that “there’s always more”.
Unwritten has a sparse landscape sonically. A throbbing heart like bass and drum part, a constant picking pattern and a solemn vocal bringing us along for the ride. Spouting words about how we perhaps should open ourselves up to external forces, however uncomfortable or scary it may be. If we aren’t real with ourselves, if we don’t take risks we will never see benefit and with every sacrifice comes some reward. “No pain, no pleasure / no work, no leisure”
A common thread of exploration certainly weaves itself into the work as whole, both in sentiment and sound. Where the majority of the first 80% of the record maintains a sort of grayed hue in its tone and brightness, Held Up portrays an attitude and force harkening to a gospel choir with bluesy infections and hard hitting lines. It has a groove that throws you off balance a bit, a surprise, but a welcome one. With a message that we all kind of need in a political and global climate of turmoil, “we are all in this together” so we shouldn’t cast stones without expecting them boomerang back and hit us just as hard.
How can you sit in judgment
How do you cast that stone
When everybody here’s a sinner
And everybody feels alone
Although the general color of the album is a blue-gray palette that resonates with some sense of longing and sorrow, the way in which Phillips presents these themes isn’t depressing or sad. He has a magic in his voice that is able to lift you up no matter what the words are saying. It makes you think about the words a bit more, digest the meaning, feel the emotion. The arrangements contain a warmth that complements that incredibly well. Occasionally vast in a cavernous sort of a way, but never empty or alone feeling. A comfort. Phillips has has a long and varied career, from early years with Toad to solo records focused on maintaining an evocative feeling and emotion to live recordings like Coyote Sessions that full embraced playing to a room and leaving everything out there.
“Swallowed By The New” perfectly encompasses all the trials and tribulations of a man in a way that is endearing and comforting without losing its own sense of purpose and the message that not every sad songs needs to bring you down in order to truly feel its nature. Glen writes in the liner notes : “Thank you to my four families – blood, chosen, music and medicine. It’s your voices that bring me back to the path when I am lost.” This record makes it clear that the songwriter knows his trail, one that he has helped pave for so many other artists, and he isn’t going anywhere any time soon. Another fantastic record from a wonderful musician.