Fan Dance is the perfect title for Sam Phillips' seventh album of brilliantly crafted songs. Each song offers up a bit of Phillips: there's a flash of humour ("Is That Your Zebra?"), a bit of flirtation ("Fan Dance"), a little creepy cabaret ("Incinerator"). As in a fan dance, the whole shimmies behind the temporary veil, just waiting to be exposed. But Phillips has the taste and skill to be slowly revelatory. She's been doing this a long time, and knows she doesn't have to lay it all bare to get people's attention.
As on previous efforts, production is handled by Phillips' husband, T-Bone Burnett; her band includes Marc Ribot and Gillian Welch. Guitars weave in and out, creating atmosphere rather than merely bolstering her strong, smouldering vocals. Violins lend an air of urgency and regret to "Wasting My Time." The follow-up, "Taking Pictures," is a nostalgic walk through old, familiar streets (where nothing is "how it used to be," even nostalgia itself) sung to guitars that sound as though they are melting.
By turns pretty and mournful, introspective and giving, Fan Dance is more of what listeners have come to expect from the talented Phillips. But while the sound is unmistakably hers (that voice!), it is far from derivative of her previous works. Since 1988's The Indescribable Wow (her secular debut after making a number of Christian records under the name Leslie Phillips), Sam Phillips has been setting the standard for intelligent, literate pop. Fan Dance raises the bar a little higher.