Sam Phillips's new album, Don't Do Anything, is out Tuesday, and she'll celebrate by kicking off a two-week tour of in-store performances at Borders from coast to coast, starting with her hometown store in LA. Rolling Stone picks "Little Plastic Life" as a standout track off the record, including the song in its "Single Minded" list. "The magnificent Sam Phillips returns with a song that demonstrates her knack for blending curious vocals with a big parched strum," writes Rolling Stone. "To put it another way: she was Feist before there was Feist." Beliefnet says of the new album: "This underrated singer's unique vocal stylings are at their finest here, and the musical arrangements are masterful." The site lauds Sam's "prowess as an artist of true distinction," one who "still has the courage to encapsulate her emotions and experiences in her music in a way few artists ever do."
Sam Phillips's new album, Don't Do Anything, is due out on Tuesday, which she'll celebrate by kicking off a two-week tour of in-store performances at Borders from coast to coast, starting with her hometown store in Los Angeles. For tour information, click here.
Leading to the album's release, Rolling Stone picks "Little Plastic Life" as a standout track off the new record, including the song in its "Single Minded" list, along with tunes by Usher, Cindi Lauper, and Al Green. "The magnificent Sam Phillips returns with a song that demonstrates her knack for blending curious vocals with a big parched strum," writes Rolling Stone's J. Edward Keyes. "To put it another way: she was Feist before there was Feist ..." Read more at rollingstone.com. You can listen to the tune, which KCRW recently named a "Top Tune," here.
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Beliefnet has published a paean of sorts to Sam from longtime fan Kris Rasmussen, a contributor to the site's pop culture blog and a feature writer for Relevant magazine. "My love of Sam Phillips's music is unabashedly deep and goes back many years," Rasmussen admits. She writes that she has enjoyed Sam's "distinctive voice" since childhood, in the 1980s, and through the various phases of the singer-songwriter's career.
Reviewing the forthcoming album, Rasmussen asserts: "This underrated singer's unique vocal stylings are at their finest here, and the musical arrangements are masterful." She lauds Sam's "prowess as an artist of true distinction," one who "still has the courage to encapsulate her emotions and experiences in her music in a way few artists ever do."
To read the review, visit blog.beliefnet.com/idolchatter.
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WomenFolk.net, a site focusing on women in music, gives the album five stars, with reviewer Robbie McCown saying that Sam has "again made an album to become awestruck by." Referring back to Sam's two previous Nonesuch releases, A Boot and a Shoe (2004) and Fan Dance (2001), McCown sums it up this way:
Don't Do Anything builds upon the traits that made Phillips's two preceding albums so wonderful, but adds an extra layer of depth and instrumentation. Here, Phillips has effortlessly pulled the best pieces of all of her previous albums into one complete experience.
To read the review, visit womenfolk.net.
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Another avowed fan, particularly of her two Nonesuch releases, Houston Rambling's David Kennedy, writes that "musically, Don’t Do Anything is a stellar accomplishment." He concludes his review of the album this way:
Salon magazine once referred to Phillips as "the ghost of pop," and she remains a rough-cut diamond amidst a sea of insignificant, polished pop idols. This record is probably too smart, too funny and too heartfelt to change that fact. But to those for whom music---especially Phillips's music---is a treasure held near and dear, Don’t Do Anything is yet another delicate miracle from an artist who is herself no small miracle.
To read Kennedy's review, visit houstonramblings.typepad.com.
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UltimateGuitar.com includes Sam in its "Incomplete Tribute to Unsung Women in Music," describing her "pioneering impact" on the art this way:
During the past two decades, Sam Phillips has quietly crafted some of contemporary music's finest pop songs ... Without being strident, Phillips wrestles with philosophical matters having to do with faith and spirituality.
