Grant-Lee Phillips Virginia Creeper (Zoë Records/Rounder) The former frontman of long-dispersed cult favourites Grant Lee Buffalo, Phillips is a confident and informed songwriter with a gift for engaging melodies, hypnotic chord changes and harmonies, and for putting complex images and emotions into simple, memorable rhymes. The songs in this very acoustic set are sparsely enhanced by strummed acoustic guitars, fiddle, mandolin, dobro and occasionally bass and drums. Another producer may have dressed these pop-derived constructs up with rock arrangements, but someone in the production line clearly assessed that the world needs only one Ryan Adams, an artist this California troubadour closely resembles. Standout cuts are the opener, "Mona Lisa," the confessional "Dirty Secret," the eerie "Josephine Of The Swamps" and a lovely, understated take on the Gram Parsons classic, "Hickory Wind," complete with a string ensemble and pedal steel. -- GQ

Home | Return to Virginia Creeper