It's hard to tell whether it was her off-center pop songs and breathy girl-woman warble or just the oppressive club heat that made Sam Phillips' show so mesmerizing. Perhaps a bit of both.
Packed to capacity (and likely beyond),the Roxy turned to sauna hot box; even Phillips herself commented on the oven state and the audience's capacity to stick it out, the floor a virtual single body mass of loyal fans who called her back for three encores.
Backed by an economic, yet dynamically impressive band featuring her husband and producer T Bone Burnett and Tony Gilkyson on guitars, session and road veteran Jerry Scheff on bass and Josh LaBelle on drums, Phillips focused on songs from her current Virgin release, "Martinis and Bikinis."
Looking artsy-chic, blond hair cut short, wearing a shiny gold lame jacket, which at one point she tossed over her white-tank- top shoulder Sinatra style, Phillips wasn't one for moving around much. Instead, her eyes rolled and wandered back-and-forth as she swayed to the songs and captured with her crackling throaty vocal allure.
The album's Beatlesque baroque pop and psychedelic swirl sounds gave way to a leaner but more forceful, muscular and effective live arrangements, Scheff's bass looping round in Paul McCartney fashion, the punctuating guitar of Gilkyson contrasted by Burnett's more twisted, quirky solos.
The hooks and melodies were there, not always obvious, but certainly evident in "When I Fall" and "I Need Love," which sounded like Monkees songs with intellect. From the soul slippage of her older '80s song, "Trying to Hold on to the Earth," to her final number, "I Can Wait," a promise of love's patient heart, she walked a taut tightrope over chasms of emotion and logic.
Phillips goes to her well for personal evaluations and exorcisms with themes that assume failure and redemption. She addresses moral dilemmas, no doubt coming from her Christian background, but still, far from didactic.
In a musical arena with dance and ballad divas to the right and so-called riot-grrls to the left, Sam Phillips offers a refreshing vision of literate rationality and passion, sacrificing neither.