Singer-songwriter Sam Phillips believes in yesterday. She revels in it on her new album, "Martinis and Bikinis" (Virgin), dressing up her songs with a dizzying array of Beatlesque tones and textures and backward tape loops, adding strings here, a harpsichord or sitar there, and streaming guitar tracks and layered percussion nearly everywhere. She's a sucker for simple melodies and bright harmonies too, and the catchier the chorus the better.
She's no sentimentalist, though. The fact that Phillips closes the album with a clangorous cover of John Lennon's "Gimme Some Truth" suggests she's more apt to view the world through his eyes than through Paul McCartney's. But by the time that track has rolled around, Phillips has already demonstrated she has her own wary way of seeing things. A born-again Christian, she doesn't burden listeners with the heavy freight of her religious beliefs, but neither is she one to skirt moral dilemmas, whether personal, professional or social. On the contrary, she seems drawn to them.
On her third pop recording, Phillips proves even more adept than usual at combining an engaging pop sensibility with lyrics that tend to grow more complex and intriguing with each passing verse. At first blush the songs on "Martinis and Bikinis" may seem purely innocent pop fare, whimsical and free-spirited, but more often than not Phillips has something deadly serious on her mind.
"Baby I Can't Please You," for example, could be mistaken for nothing more than an age-old lover's plaint, underscored by a wall-to-wall drum arrangement, until Phillips dissects the doomed relationship with a single blow: "I know you say love when you mean control/ You buy the truth and your heart is cold/ So you live in the shadows." The guitars on "Signposts" instantly recall the Beatles' late-'60s work, but the emotional restlessness that resonates throughout the song gives it an utterly different depth and character. Similarly, the opening guitar riff on "The Same Changes" cheerily harks back to "Day Tripper," but the lyrics, which concern conflicting urges of greed and honesty, are anything but cheery.
Phillips adroitly addresses other topics as well, from the price of fame ("Circle of Fire") to environmental issues ("Black Sky"), while relying on producer T Bone Burnett - her husband - and guest musicians including Van Dyke Parks, Peter Buck, Benmont Tench and Marc Ribot, to wrap her plaintive voice in an evocative tapestry of sounds. The result is that rarity in pop: an album that's as thoughtful as it is tuneful and colorful.