Sam Phillips - Martinis & Bikinis
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Sam PhillipsEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1994-03-08
Music Label: Virgin Records Us
Soundtracks:
- Love and Kisses
- Signposts
- Same Rain
- Baby I Can't Please You
- Circle of Fire
- Strawberry Road
- When I Fall
- Same Changes
- Black Sky
- Fighting With Fire
- I Need Love
- Wheel of the Broken Voice
- Gimme Some Truth
Free Music Notes for Martinis & Bikinis
Free Music Review: Important without a hint of pretension
Hit: 5 Stars
Some of you may recognize the name Leslie Phillips as a Christian singer of the 80's who was regularly classed with the likes of Amy Grant (one of her albums was titled "Black and White in a World of Grey"). Around the turn of the decade, the form that her faith had taken dissolved and, for many of her fans, she left the fold. I only started to listen to her after this break, however, and I have yet to be able un-insinuate her songs from my mind. A quick listen to one of her "post-CCM" albums might give the impression that she simply writes three-minute pop songs about love (albeit in a slightly more inventive fashion than the ones you normally hear); at least, that's all I heard on my first try - but it's amazing how sneakily her music creeps up on you. Phillips does write pop songs - but they're bizarre, stirring, groovy songs that refuse to fall into place and sit still. It's definitely not "rock" music; the drumming/percussion on her songs, for instance (although you could say the same for whatever instruments she uses) is often understated, varied, and occasionally spiky - never driving or trying to overwhelm or puncture. It tends to flicker and vibrate, rather than call for attention. (It's something like the difference between a man's firm grip in a handshake and the way you'd only touch the fingers of a women in doing the same - but certainly no less pleasant for being so.) Phillips' voice, too, is not overpowering; it's rich, and can connote husky, raw feeling, but mostly keeps itself a little bottom-heavy and mellow. "Signposts," the second song on the album, is a good example of this insinuating power. A syncopated bass drum starts it out, only to be interrupted by the clatter of a few hits out of time; her guitarist then joins in, off-beat, only to have the snare drum start, off beat with the guitar. The rhythm all comes together in the chorus, however (with the guitar breaking into arpeggiated chords) and makes the theme more wonderful for it: "Logic dances you from here to there/Not very far/Making sense can't tell you/Where you are." This is not a statement of meaninglessness, however: "I wanted to get lost and love the questions there/Beauty and the truth that I could breathe like air/Till I finally found a signpost in a strange land."
Ruminating about lyrics like this is how Phillips' music so firmly insinuates itself: it's as if she's not impressed with all the ways we normally try to unravel our own experience, wanting to get out to those places beyond all that insipid sense-making - where she could breathe beauty and truth like air (what a line! Sure beats "black and white in a world of gray" - but still shows something of the same concern!). This is interesting enough - what sort of odd ways will she find, I wonder, to speak of beauty and truth that far outshine the sort of truisms that normally get passed off as sound conviction? But she doesn't stop there - she's in a strange land, but she sees a signpost, pointing her beyond even that. With a few lines, my world is turned on its side. (Keep in mind this is only the second song on the disc.)
The album as a whole doesn't lose any momentum. She is totally unassuming, even a little shy, in how she presents her vision through her pop songs (titles include "Baby I Can't Please You" and "I Need Love"); but this underhanded delivery makes the vision all the more moving. Most memorable (to me) is her disillusionment with the one who "censors longing and organizes beauty" so that he can't get to the place of richness "where the dream fades/down between our longing and desire/where our hearts break - into love." The rules aren't always right, she says - but that doesn't mean she's any less in love with what can't be captured by rules. It seems to me that when Leslie became Sam, she wasn't walking away from God, but getting closer. And letting God be mysterious.
She shows a more social concern elsewhere when she gets fed up with "The borders and the flags/How far our guns can shoot/Fascist slogans/And the movie of the week/The way we sell ourselves/The way we spend our greed." She's not preaching, though, as much as squinting - she ends her list of social absurdities by admitting "How long it takes/To hear our dreams," again pointing toward that richness that is hard to find but impossible to miss. She delivers her concerns about God and Americans (and how Americans live) so effectively that it makes the album truly revolutionary and even dangerous; the sort of thing that, if there were personal agents guiding our society in the directions it's heading, they would want to censor it much sooner than a lot of other self-styled revolutionary musicians out there. (Or perhaps they could conspire to keep the majority of Americans ignorant of her existence - just as they are now.) Anyway, it sure beats 99% of the sludge that daily pours out my radio. All that, with these groovy guitar riffs to boot! Hubba hubba!
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