E. G. Phillips and his music come from another place, and I’m not sure where that place is. Is it a different mindset, a different era, a yet unmined genre that only he knows the location of, a whole different musical world, one that seems to border modern, popular music while having discernible roots in everything from classical music and Edwardian parlor songs, a new jazz sub-genre and musical theatre, and more besides?
His latest EP, Tricks of the Light is music that revels in being different yet also beguiling in its effect on the listener. There is something wonderfully fresh in his musical constructs, yet, not so unfamiliar that it ever feels like a challenge, well, occasionally perhaps, but the best music often never arrives served ready to eat on a plate.
“From the Corner of My Eye” is an acoustic folk tune immersed in classical strings and gentle piano, and this sets the sonic template for what is to follow. However, those three ingredients, shifting in dominance, allow him to cover a lot of ground. Songs like “The Albatross Song (Mellow Like) perfectly encapsulate this, weaving between folk-scapes and stirring classical composition.
“When It Gets Dark” wanders between general balladry and epic grandeur to round things off. And by the time you get to the end of this six-song suite, it is perhaps the exquisite nature of the lyrics, not just their stories, which see us wandering through Greek myth, following sea birds on their far-flung adventures and contemplating William Blake’s Tyger but the exacting and wonderfully precise literary word choice that are the real charm.
This is music that is wonderfully and deliberately out of pace with modern music (good), and even within the realms of classical, folk, and jazz, from which it builds its sound, it remains unique, satisfyingly odd, and oddly satisfying.
More please.
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