Artist - Grant Lee Phillips
Album - Strangelet
Label - Cooking Vinyl
Grant Lee Phillips followed up the excellent singer songwriter Virginia Creeper with the really rather cool and laidback nineteeneighties, a take on his 'formative' songs from the 80s.
Those songs, from bands like REM, the Pixies and The Cure, form the sound of this album of original material.
His warm voice lends a wonderful timbre to the left-leaning alternative indie rock, based on enough touches of acoustic instrumentation to remind the listener of his old band, Grant Lee Buffalo.
Phillips manages to maintain a de Niro intensity throughout slower songs, but here it is the more upbeat songs that stand out.
Ultimately, there isn't much of a knockout blow on the disc - Strangelet proceeds nicely enough, but it's more likely to remain a friend than develop into something more.
Slowly, however, Phillips' canon is expanding into a reliably great set of albums.
Rating 7/10
Mike Rea
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