Lone Voices Dept. - Shawn Phillips

Bright White appeared a year after Faces, and didn't perform quite so well on the U.S. and Canadian charts, which must have been a major disappointment for Phillips and A&M. It's generally thought to be his most commercial and accessible release, and the label did everything possible to make it fly, employing a roster of studio talent you'd be hard-pressed to equal: Chucks Rainey and Findley, Craig Doerge, Russ Kunkel, Danny Kortchmar, Jims Price and Horn, Bobby Keyes, Sneeky Pete, Lee Sklar ... with arrangements by Paul Buckmaster and Peter Robinson, and some air-frying guitar by the mysterious Tony Walmsley, whose soaring muscular sustain is a definite and unique plus.

Why wasn't it a massive hit? It's possible it got buried in the avalanche of major releases by better-known acts. 1973 was an extraordinary year; Dark Side Of The Moon, Raw Power, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Houses Of The Holy, Countdown To Ecstasy, the first Eagles album, Wake Of The Flood, Tyranny And Mutation, Birds Of Fire, Welcome, Solid Air, Let's Get It On, Catch A Fire, Band On The Run, For Everyman, 3+3, the first two Springsteen albums, Quadrophenia, Brothers And Sisters, Goats Head Soup, Headhunters, Holland, Dixie Chicken, Innervisions ... the list goes on. How spoiled we were back then!

Two nights sold out at The Orpheum, Minneapolis '73

And there wasn't a single. The title song didn't quite hit the sweet spot, struggling up to #62 in Canadia, where Phillips had a loyal Mountie and Lumberjack following. Maybe the slickness was a turn-off for the folkie crowd who'd adopted him. Who knows? It wasn't the breakthrough he needed, and A&M were to let him go a couple of years later.

But there's something else - the fan in me has loved and enjoyed this album through countless plays over the decades, but the critic in me notes a certain stiffness in his precision. Take The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle from the same year. Both albums open with some clavinet funk and climax with a cinematically romantic showstopper, but where Springsteen is natural and impassioned, a young man on the threshold of his dream, Phillips has an almost academic approach to his craft, already an old hand on his seventh album. Easier to respect than to love, perhaps?

Shawn has been FoamFeatured© antecedently - hit the search box!