Grant-Lee Phillips
By: Sean Slone - ModernRock.com
Grant-Lee Phillips bounded onstage wearing an old flannel shirt that looked like it had seen better days. It's part of his new "think hobo, act loco" philosophy, he quipped. It was one of many funny one-liners from the erstwhile Grant Lee Buffalo singer, who's a bit of a spazz motor-mouth between those darkly beautiful, rustic folk-pop songs.
Phillips is touring in support of an excellent new solo record he is distributing on his own called Ladies' Love Oracle, which he recorded in L.A. producer Jon Brion's basement studio. But Phillips took the IOTA crowd back through the GLB catalogue as well with a heavy emphasis on songs from 1993's Fuzzy and 1994's Mighty Joe Moon, arguably the best of the band's four musical collages of multi-layered Americana imagery.
Opening with "Come to Mama, She Say" from 1998's last GLB record Jubilee, Phillips strummed a beautiful-sounding Takemine 12-string guitar for much of his hour and forty-five minute set. The intimate setting of IOTA ("up close and personal like Oprah" is how he put it) was the perfect place to get the full effect of Phillips' elastic and expressive voice from the soulful low notes to the soaring falsettos. It's almost a shame this guy was buried behind a band for so long, opening arena shows for REM and the like.
"At one point I felt like I was channeling Gwen Stefani," Phillips joked after a passionate take on Fuzzy's "The Shining Hour," a song which sounds a bit like early Waterboys.
Perhaps the biggest ovation of the evening came a couple of songs later as he plunged into the title track from Mighty Joe Moon.
"I'm feeling like Robbie Knievel tonight," he said of performing a requested "Bethlehem Steel" in its original key. Whether he was riffing on the History Channel (or the Hitler Channel as he calls it because of the Nazi leader's frequent presence on the network) or on Brad Pitt's bad Irish accent in the film "The Devil's Own" ("They had to follow him around with jig music so you'd get the point," he said), it was clear Phillips was having a lot of fun.
Among the new songs highlighted was the Lennon-esque "You're A Pony" from the new EP. Phillips also did a really good and very funny McCartney impression as the evening progressed.
He moved over to synthesizer for a take on the Copperopolis piano ballads "All That I Have" and "Hyperion and Sunset," which revealed new mysteries stripped of their produced full band sound. He said he had wanted to bring an old tack piano on stage but one wasn't available so he had to settle for "something the Captain (of Captain and Tenille fame) once played. It imitates a few marsupials and muskrats as well."
After seeing Phillips sing the "Dear Prudence"-like "Mockingbirds" from Mighty Joe Moon, I still don't know how he hits those impossibly high notes in the chorus. Phillips also turned in a soulful "Honey Don't Think" from that record and a heartfelt "Truly, Truly" from Jubilee. But it was a spellbinding "Jupiter and Teardrop" from Fuzzy that was the highlight of the night. The song tells the backwoods America tale of "a girl who can't say no" who finally gives up on her "sweetheart on parole."
"Somebody's been getting a little Nugent with my guitar," Phillips said upon hitting a heavily-distorted chord on the Takemine before ripping into a cover of the Pixies' "Wave of Mutilation." He then wrapped up the main set with the melodic new "St. Expedite" and a terrific version of Jubilee's "Testimony."
A two-song encore included the Mighty Joe Moon piano ballad "Happiness" and a requested version of the title track from Fuzzy.
DC-area singer Eric Brace of the country-blues-rock band Last Train Home opened the show with a set of excellent folk songs delivered in an emotive voice
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