Sam Phillips
Learning to love a Sam Phillips CD is like learning a foreign language. At first, the material is so dense you want to give up the whole idea. The more you listen, though, the more a new world opens up. And after three or four spins through the complex tunes of the singer-songwriter's latest album, its mesmerizing charm slowly wins you over.
Phillips's songs are built around deceptively sweet, catchy melodies that twist off into unexpected territory, and Omnipop is her most diverse, compelling disc yet. There is her trademark brooding pop, like "Entertain-men" and "Slapstick Heart," which open and close the CD on a somber note. In between there's a variety of inventive material, like the funky thump of "Plastic Is Forever" and the cocktail-lounge slickness of "Zero Zero Zero!" that is as iconoclastic as it is intriguing. Too bad more pop artists aren't fluent in Phillips. (Virgin)
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