(Virgin)
Sam Phillips has to her credit two of the most accessible and clever pop albums of the '90s, The Indescribable Wow and Martinis and Bikinis. Her fourth album for Virgin is just as smart and accomplished, but not as ready to win you over. Instead, it's a bold artistic move by someone who's marginally commercial to start.
With her cautious heart, furrowed brow and opinions and hopes all firmly in place, Phillips goes way beyond the cohesive Beatles pastiche of Martinis and Bikinis (which earned her a 1994 Grammy nomination) and gamely ventures into more esoteric pop pursuits.
Produced by Phillips' husband, T Bone (J. Henry) Burnett, Omnipop is exactly what the title suggests: pop music from every angle. And while these diverse, complex tunes may seem little philosophic puzzles at first listen, all are aimed squarely at the heart, and at common sense.
Unlike his recent distracting attempt at boundary-stretching for Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Burnett's multifarious efforts really work here - he adds oddball instruments, string arrangements, evocative circus noir backgrounds and volume, volume, volume on the percussion.
Phillips first made records as a contemporary Christian artist; and Burnett produced The Turning, her final album as Leslie Phillips. She doesn't even comment now on that phase of her career, but conscientious humanism and guarded optimism continue to define her now-secular lyrics. Supporting the artist's view that the world is a rough, unstable place (whether in relationships or the global economy), the arrangements on Omnipop provide no safety net for Phillips at her most vulnerable, and lend muscle to her pointedly critical, sometimes jaded (but not cynical) lyrics. Her heart seeks answers, fulfillment and sometimes danger, and her head is worked up over our disposable, artificial, money-driven culture.
On "Plastic is Forever," surreal squeals and squonks suggest a Terry Gilliam factory assembly line, befitting the subject. With "Animals on Wheels", Phillips tries to make sense of fame (and the concomitant traps of greed and ambition) - "but everytime I go after it/my ideals run off with my heart."
The zippy "Zero Zero Zero!" (arranged by trumpeter Darrell Leonard) percolates with bachelor-pop touches - chamberlin, marimbas, bongos, Greg Liesz' steel guitar, and more -- flying merrily over a marching band arrangement, and a tight ska horn section. The message is serious, as always: instead of wanting "more," be happy with what you have, and who you are - "the zero in my hand is nothing to lose" and "everything that I'm not is all I've got," she sings. Nothing is also a valued, pure Zen ideal, she seems to suggest - whatever she's trying to say, the track is ab fab.
"Faster Pussycat To The Library!" isn't as funny as it sounds; it's an up-front invitation to the dance, with "the library" a metaphor for discovery - possibly the black-and-blue kinks of the Russ Meyer reference in the title ("I'll show you every room/don't say a word/open every book for you/things you never heard.")
Phillips plumbs the depths of her emotional longing in "Help Yourself" and "Your Hands," and wonders what she's in for in "Where Are You Taking Me." The closing "Slapstick Heart," the most straightforward Burnett production here, was cowritten with R.E.M.
Yes, learning to love Omnipop takes some effort, but the number of repeat listens required will be time well spent, and ultimately rewarded.
