| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Carl |
Posted - 05/09/2006 : 13:49:15
http://www.grantleephillips.com/news.html
What’s
taken shape in the late hours of my downtime is a
semi-acoustic rendering of cult classics by The Pixies,
Joy Division, REM, The Cure, Robyn Hitchcock, The
Church, Nick Cave, New Order, Echo And The
Bunnymen and The Smiths.
http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002464593
Former Grant Lee Buffalo leader Grant-
Lee Phillips has revisited some of his
favorite songs for the album
"nineteeneighties," due June 27 via
Zoe/Rounder. The 12-track set
features covers of New Order's "Age of
Consent," the Pixies' "Wave of
Mutilation," Echo & the Bunnymen's
"The Killing Moon" and the Smiths'
"Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody
Loved Me," among others.
"It's my personal mix tape, just as it's
reeled around in my head for
decades," Phillips writes on his Web
site. "In truth, there nothing like the real thing. The originals are thankfully available and
easily iTunable for the most part. And yet these melodies, these words demand to be sung,
strummed and passed down as is oral tradition."
Here is the track list for 'nineteeneighties':
"Wave of Mutilation" (the Pixies)
"Age of Consent" (New Order)
"The Eternal" (Joy Division)
"I Often Dream of Trains" (Robyn Hitchcock)
"The Killing Moon" (Echo & the Bunnymen)
"Love My Way" (Psychedelic Furs)
"Under the Milky Way" (the Church)
"City of Refuge" (Nick Cave)
"So. Central Rain (Sorry)" (R.E.M.)
"Boys Don't Cry" (the Cure)
"Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me" (the Smiths)
-- Jonathan Cohen, N.Y. |
| 10 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| chineselover |
Posted - 04/25/2007 : 17:43:21
Grant Lee Phillips hitting the road - will be in London and Dublin in August, - more dates on www.grantleephillips.com , i'd recommend seeing him live... |
| Carl |
Posted - 06/21/2006 : 11:24:47
http://www.musicomh.com/albums5/grant-lee-phillips_0606.htm
Grant-Lee Phillips - Nineteeneighties (Cooking Vinyl)
UK release date: 26 June 2006
Nineteeneighties is Grant-Lee Phillips' homage to
his musical heroes. An LP of covers in the style
of David Bowie's Pin Ups. As the title suggests
it's a tour around the 1980s with a pronounced
slant towards old school indie rock. Now cover
versions are odd beasts: much like plumbing in a
sink, they are more complex and difficult to carry
off than they first appear. They are slippery and
it's almost impossible to tell which ones will
succeed and which will fail.
My mate James brings CDs of covers version to
poker night. Once a week he conjures up an
eclectic selection. The versions can swing from the
sublime (Jimi Hendrix's All Along the Watchtower)
via the odd (anything by Nouvelle Vague) to
outright blasphemy (Tina Turner murdering
Unfinished Sympathy). Here Mr Philips serves up
eleven differing takes on the strange art of the
cover.
I was intrigued to discover how Mr Phillips would
translate the diverse material he had gathered
here. From the primal scream of the Pixies' Wave
Of Mutilation to the crystal melodies of Echo & The
Bunnymen's Killing Moon to the flimsy early
electronica of New Order's Age Of Consent. The
artists and songs encompass a broad church of
noise. The originals would make a great
soundtrack, but would the covers flow together or
just sound lumpen and disjointed?
I shouldn't have worried. One look at the track
listing shows that Grant-Lee Phillips has a love and
understanding for these songs. He hasn't gone for
obvious choices; the majority are songs that are
buried on LPs, and are not the hit singles that a
casual fan my have picked. It's not This Charming
Man or Love Will Tear Us Apart on show here.
The fragile nature of the cover version is shown in
stark relief by the opening two tracks. I thought
that the Pixies' Wave Of Mutilation would be a
perfect fit for Grant-Lee's towering vocals and
dusty Americana. Yet the result is something of a
low slung dirge. It highlights the shortcomings of
the Pixies range more than a failure on the part of
Grant-Lee. The thrill of the Pixies sound resides in
those screaming guitars, poppy baselines and
Black Francis' bug-eyed vocals. In a stripped down
form there appears to be little left to play with.
I winced when I saw that New Order's Age Of
Consent was one of the featured tracks. The song
is tied so tightly to Peter Hook's bassline I thought
it would be like cutting off Samson's hair, that it
would lose its power when torn away from its
moorings. Astonishingly, it works - the bassline
replaced by acoustic guitars and a finger picked
melody. The pithy lyric of disgust and anger sounds
wounded, Grant-Lee's voice taking on some of
Barney Sumners' delicate papery grace.
The remaining songs are all successes. The Cure's
Boys Don't Cry has a slowed down, brittle heartfelt
edge; REM's So Central Rain is wreathed in sweet
southern air; Joy Division's Eternal is a lesson in
restrained atmospherics, the vocals teasing out
hidden counter melodies in Ian Curtis' most
haunted lyric, a bluesy harmonica, mournful piano
notes and subtle organ tones replacing the icy
synths of the original.
Morrissey's infamous piano intro is cut from the
cover of The Smiths' Last Night I Dreamt
Somebody Loved Me, but the ache, the longing, the
weary heartbreak is retained; the song slowly
envelops you like the onset of sleep. On the
version of The Church's Under The Milky Way,
bright acoustic guitars float elegantly above the
dark menace of reverberating electronics.
Often the cover version can often been viewed as
an attempt to escape writer's block. Grant-Lee
Phillips has never struck me as someone short of
his own material, and you can hear the esteem in
which he holds the songs on this record. The
personal attachment to the material shines
through. He seems to have climbed inside their
very DNA. They feel personal, lived in and
cherished. This record deserves to be more than
simply the soundtrack to my next night of poker.
- Tony Heywood
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-2235848,00.html
The Sunday TimesJune 25, 2006
Pop: New Releases: Grant Lee Phillips:
Nineteeneighties
MARK EDWARDS
GRANT-LEE PHILLIPS
Nineteeneighties ~
Cooking Vinyl COOKCD380
A gentle stroll through the Pixies’ Wave of Mutilation sets the tone for this album
of cover versions, the former Grant Lee Buffalo singer’s nod towards the 1980s
bands who influenced him, and who defined alt-rock before the term came into
use. Slow, soft, subtle, Phillips’s interpretations cut so neatly to the heart of
these songs that you sometimes find yourself thinking: “I bet the original band’s
demo sounded just like that.” The only drawback is that the dreamy pace can
occasionally become soporific, although versions of New Order’s Age of Consent
and Nick Cave’s City of Refuge offer a bit more bite. The final three tracks —
REM’s So Central Rain, the Cure’s Boys Don’t Cry and the Smiths’ Last Night I
Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me — are simply sublime. Three stars
Download Boys Don’t Cry at www.itunes.com
http://www.avclub.com/content/node/50214
Grant-Lee Phillips
Nineteeneighties
(Zoë/Rounder)
Reviewed by Keith Phipps
July 5th, 2006
Covers albums generally rank next to "greatest hits played
live" releases as easy ways for a band to fill out its catalog
without trying all that hard. That bad rap is mostly deserved,
because most musicians think plugging in and playing some
old favorites is good enough. Instead, that approach usually
just exposes how short they fall of the legends that inspired
them. Still, there are happy exceptions like Grant-Lee Phillips'
Nineteeneighties.
Touring the work of college-rock favorites like Pixies, Robyn
Hitchcock, Echo & The Bunnymen, and others, Phillips has
made, by his description, a "personal mix-tape." The
emphasis is solidly on the "personal." Defining the difference
between a cover and an interpretation, Phillips employs spare
accompaniment and his rich, unmistakable voice to reshape
the tracks as his own. Without the bath of synths,
Psychedelic Furs' "Love My Way" becomes an insistent,
slow-paced plea. Nick Cave's "City Of Refuge" gets
transformed into an acoustic gospel warning, while New
Order's "Age Of Consent" wears a country twang surprisingly
well. If there's a heaven for people who came of age in the
'80s, this is what's playing at the coffee shop.
A.V. Club Rating: B+
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,20069905-5003421,00.html
Means so much
Trent Dalton
August 10, 2006 12:00am
ROCK
Grant-Lee Phillips
Nineteeneighties
(Cooking Vinyl)
THE Pixies as a Bayou string band; The Cure gone Dylan –
welcome to the 1980s, as heard by Grant Lee Buffalo maestro
Grant-Lee Phillips.
While fans eagerly await his fourth album of solo originals,
Phillips pauses here to "reframe" some of his favourite tracks
from the '80s.
The Pixies' Wave of Mutilation portends an album of quirky, fun
re-imaginings. Midway through JoyDivision's The Eternal,
however, we realise this is anything but.
Phillips' Eternal sounds like Neil Young diving deep into the
black. And he never climbs back out again, through Echo and
The Bunnymen's The Killing Moon, Nick Cave's City of Refuge,
The Cure's Boys Don't Cry and The Church's Under the Milky
Way. These are rich, heartbreaking renderings of true greats
that clearly meant a lot to Phillips growing up in California and,
perhaps, helped shape him into one of modern music's better
songwriters.
It's all good, but REM's So. Central Rain (I'm Sorry) and The
Smiths' Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me are
brilliant.
http://www.xpressmag.com.au/archives/2006/09/grantlee_philli.php
GRANT-LEE PHILLIPS - Nineteeneighties
Opening with a revised version of The Pixies’ Wave Of Mutilation,
Grant-Lee Phillips sets the scene for his fourth album as a solo act
following on from his acclaimed group, Grant Lee Buffalo.
In Nineteeneighties, Phillips has taken a selection of his favourite
tracks from this era and adapted them to his inimitable style of
smooth vocals and delicate acoustic guitar playing.
Referred to as his ‘personal mix tape’, Phillips features 11 tracks that
span a familiar selection of classic ’80s groups also including Psychedelic Furs (Love My Way),
REM (So. Central Rain), Robyn Hitchcock (I Often Dream Of Trains), New Order (Age Of
Consent), Echo And The Bunnymen (Killing Moon) and The Smiths (Last Night I Dreamed That
Somebody Loved Me).
Using not much more than acoustic guitar and piano at times, Phillips succeeds in creating
uplifting, lighter versions of songs that often leant towards the darker side of music in their
heyday. Check out The Church’s Under The Milky Way and The Cure’s Boys Don’t Cry for
great examples of Grant-Lee Phillips at his interpretive best.
Long live the Nineteeneighties.
_ KAREN BILSBY-BUTLER
Posted on September 28, 2006 11:20 AM
http://thewireless.blogspot.com/2006/12/my-best-of-year-part-6.html
Grant Lee Phillips -
Nineteeneighties
Nostalgia's always tricky. The
perspective on an era or a
series of events shapes your
understanding of that time. As
William Blake pointed out,
things look different from the
point of view of innocence than
they do through the frame of
experience.
I saw Grant Lee Buffalo perform live shortly after the release of their
legendary 'Mighty Joe Moon' album. I was expecting a stand and sway
affair, but those guys absolutely rocked the house. One of the three
best concerts of my life.
As a result of that concert, I've kept an eye on the career of singer
Grant Lee Phillips and always give a listen to anything that comes out
of that camp. We're a smallish group of devotees, but we like to
think we have exceptional taste.
Although Phillips's songwriting is pretty top notch most of the time
(with a few exceptions on Copperopolis), with this record, he's
released an album of cover versions from (as the album title reveals)
the 1980s. But these are not the Kylies, Wham!s and T'Paus of the
80s, but the very best of the music that was most important to me
throughout my high school and undergraduate years.
With a laconic and world-weary country sensibility, Grant Lee Phillips
reworks the likes of The Pixies' 'Wave of Mutilation', Echo and the
Bunnymen's 'Killing Moon' and Australian band The Church's wonderful
'Under the Milkyway' (last heard covered by Strawpeople in an entirely
different fashion).
Also appearing: Love My Way, So Central Rain, Last Night I Dreamed
Somebody Loved Me and Boys Don't Cry. If any of those titles mean
anything to you, and you ever heard the haunting voice of Grant Lee
Buffalo's 'Mockingbirds', then you'll know exactly why you need to own
this album.
So much has happened in 20 years. I'm not just the same person with
some age added. I'm an entirely different human being. It's for that
reason that you can never really properly relive those moments and
understand them from the same perspective of innocence -- but
Grant Lee Phillips can take you back there as a grown-up.
It's quite something to spend 45 minutes just sitting, looking back
and remembering in the company of this particular collection of
interpretations.
It's a genuinely melancholy record -- a soundtrack to an imaginary and
semi-autobiographical movie.
And as the last songs play, our protagonist looks out of the bus
window. Slowly, it pulls away, the rain blurring his features. There
has been loss -- but there's been wisdom. He's loved, he's laughed
and he's made mistakes, and now it's time put these things behind
him to move on... to who knows what. But he's hopeful.
Fade to black.
http://music.monstersandcritics.com/reviews/article_1283956.php/Album_Review_Grant_Lee_Phillips_-_Strangelet
Yet, after last year`s delightful covers record (saluting Echo & the
Bunnymen, the Church, Pixies, etc.) he has returned with a new album
whose gems - "Soft Asylum (No Way Out)" and especially the mandolin-
driven "Fountain of Youth" - are on par with those of his previous band. And
even during the second-tier moments, there`s a sense that he`s regained
his artistic footing.
http://www.contactmusic.com/new/home.nsf/webpages/grantleephillipsx10x04x07
Grant Lee Phillips followed up the excellent singer
songwriter Virginia Creeper with the really rather
cool and laidback nineteeneighties, a take on his
'formative' songs from the 80s. Those songs, from
bands like REM, the Pixies and The Cure, form the
sound of this album of original material. |
| PixieSteve |
Posted - 05/25/2006 : 10:33:29
yeah, so anyway... i don't anything about this guy, but i'd like to check out those covers...
FAST_MAN RAIDER_MAN - June 19th |
| Carl |
Posted - 05/25/2006 : 10:19:22
 |
| PixieSteve |
Posted - 05/25/2006 : 10:14:10
yes, i love you really. i just felt like being mean. thanks
FAST_MAN RAIDER_MAN - June 19th |
| Carl |
Posted - 05/25/2006 : 10:11:57
So what?! Any FB/Pixies news is worth posting on the site, right?
|
| PixieSteve |
Posted - 05/25/2006 : 10:04:21
carl, i don't read half of your posts because half of them are news reports. zzzzzzzzzzzz
FAST_MAN RAIDER_MAN - June 19th |
| Carl |
Posted - 05/25/2006 : 09:56:48
http://www.rte.ie/arts/2006/0525/phillipsgl.html
25 May 2006
Grant-Lee Phillips releasing covers album
Acclaimed singer-songwriter Grant-Lee Phillips
is to release a new album of cover versions of
1980s alternative classics next month.
'Nineteeneighties' is released on Friday 26 June
and features Phillips' interpretations of songs
by, among others, REM, the Pixies, The
Smiths, Joy Division, Nick Cave and New Order.
Commenting on the album, Phillips said: "It's a nod to some of the songs and
people that made a lasting impact on my own songwriting and musicianship.
It's my personal mix tape, just as it's reeled around in my head for decades."
The full tracklisting for 'nineteeneighties' is:
Wave of Mutliation (the Pixies)
Age of Consent (New Order)
The Eternal (Joy Division)
I Often Dream Of Trains (Robyn Hitchcock)
The Killing Moon (Echo and the Bunnymen)
Love My Way (Psychedelic Furs)
Under The Milky Way Tonight (The Church)
City of Refuge (Nick Cave)
So.Central Rain (REM)
Boys Don't Cry (The Cure)
Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me (The Smiths)
Phillips - "My personal mix tape" |
| Broken Face |
Posted - 05/17/2006 : 07:48:54
i know that Grant Lee and David Lovering are good friends, so it doesn't surprise me that he'd be a Pixies fan.
-Brian
|
| marcus4realius |
Posted - 05/17/2006 : 07:31:49
This sounds like it will be great. Thanks for the info Carl. i love GLB and GLP. |
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