Grant-Lee Phillips Virginia Creeper (Cooking Vinyl) Heartbreaking rustic folk aceness Currently moonlighting from his Grant Lee Buffalo alias, California's Grant-Lee Phillips is a songsmith to be cherished. Now on his third solo long player, Phillips writes rustic Americana-tinged delta swamp odes to love lost and changing emotions. In short, he's the kind of songwriter Ryan Adams would lobotomise himself to be. Because, flanked by fiddle, banjo and honky-tonk piano, and with Phillips' whisky-ravaged larynx issuing forth tormented statements of emotional distress, there's a sincerity and unabashed romanticism about his music that is to be applauded. 'Mona Lisa' is one such nugget of broken-hearted and salty teared splendour, while 'Hickory Wind' sounds like the ghost of a former love trespassing in Phillips' soul. A harrowing listen, then, but as pleasurable and life-enriching as the most lingering of sloppy, knee-trembling kisses. -- James Jam

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