Why am I not giving a 5 star review of the CD I've been playing all through the last two years? Maybe the only reason is that, as the Uncut review says, somewhere there's a spark missing, a spark that was definitely there when Grant Lee Buffalo cut their best work.
Still, "Ladies' Love Oracle" is compulsory stuff for anyone into anything from Lennon to singers-songwriters. There's sheer brilliance in the love song "Heavenly", there's some kind of jubilance in "St Expedite", and there's none of the baroqueness that buried some of the later Grant Lee Buffalo songs. Here's a musician at work for the love of music. Piano, guitar and that incredible voice.
I purchased the CD after I saw Phillips at a Brussels show in 2002. It's got his signature on the sleeve. A thoroughly likeble man who, as he said during the show, is comfortable with the fact that the momentum of his career has passed on to others. A good thing. Because, to paraphrase a less likeable musician, this CD, like a good wine, is getting better as it gets older.