Sam Phillips is some kind of gymnast. She walks the narrow balance beam, poised between faith and despair, and she doesn't fall off once during the ten songs on "Cruel Inventions." Back in the dreary days when she was Leslie Phillips, making generic Christian praise songs, you could pretty much count on the way the routine would come out. Sweet hymns, Scripture paraphrases, and a double back-flip of a love song at the end, and then wait for the riotous applause from the Youth Pastors of America.
God knows what the Youth Pastors are thinking now. Sam sings about sex and marital warfare and doubt and emptiness and being "stained with heaven, and always washing." She also sings about her endless longing, and he desire for peace and meaning in her life, and, in a line that would make T. S. Eliot proud, about "seeing a way out/ Starting with ashes and building fire." It sounds like serious stuff, and it is, but Sam couches these musings in brilliant pop settings, and with the help of folks like T-Bone Burnett and Elvis Costello and Marc Ribot and Van Dyke Parks, she turns these philosophical conundrums into wonderfully catchy music. Can you imagine the dark night of the soul on Top 40 radio? Believe it with this album. I think it's a pretty great routine. I'll give a her a 9.5, and I'll even throw in a few bonus points for not falling off the beam.