Sam Phillips - Push Any Button [2013] [EAC,log,cue. FLAC]

Artist:Sam Phillips
Release:Push Any Button
Released: 2013
Label: Eden Bridge Music
Catalog#: LR0002
Format: FLAC / Lossless / Log (100%) / Cue
Country: USA
Style:alternative


1-Pretty Time Bomb
2-When I'm Alone
3-All Over Me
4-Going
5-Things I Shouldn't Have Told You
6-Speaking of Pictures
7-See You in Dreams
8-You Know I Won't
9-Can't See Straight
10-No Time Like Now

Push Any Button has been a long time coming. It’s been in the works since at least 2011, when Sam Phillips told American Songwriter “it’s a sweet kind of album and I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know what compelled me to make it. It’s probably a bad idea, but everytime I listen to what I’ve done, it makes me really happy.” And so with the listener. Several of the album’s 10 songs are jubilant, toe-tapping vintage pop numbers. But none of them are overly so, and that’s what makes the album interesting.

Take “When I’m Alone” for instance. It’s a nice, upbeat country shuffle. “When I’m alone now, I’m not lonely,” Phillips sings, “I’d rather be alone in this world than to be lonely together like we’ve been.” It’s not a breakup (or divorce) song; it’s an “I’m finally over you” song. So while it communicates satisfaction, it’s a satisfaction chastened by loss. This is even more the case in “All Over Me,” where she muses, “It’s like walking in the starlight in the daytime/ Where your insides are brighter than the light/ Drained of emptiness that filled me/ The dark is gone; I’m not holding onto anything.”

As a whole, Push Any Button seems like an album about coming out of a long, hard period of despair. And while this is explicit in the lyrics, it’s even more apparent in the album’s brilliantly understated production. “All Over Me,” for instance, balances a slightly off-kilter acoustic guitar riff with Motown-style horn lines played only in low brass. While the melody might more obviously lend itself to brighter colors and richer textures — trumpets and saxophones, organ, electric guitar — the track instead breathes with intentionally empty space. And this only makes sense; a newfound sense of clarity does warrant exaltation, but not excessive exaltation, because that clarity has been hard-won.

This is the case throughout the album. The production is usually less interesting for what it includes than for what it leaves out. A steady hi-hat is often absent, replaced by subtle shakers and tambourines. Electric instruments, when present, usually provide texture or simple melody, not show-stealing solos. The songs are uncluttered, the parts are always distinct, and the result is almost always pleasing.

If the record has a weakness, it’s that none of the songs are particularly memorable (which is not to say they aren’t catchy). This may sound like harsh criticism, but I don’t mean it to be taken as such. I only want to suggest that the album works best as a cohesive whole rather than as a collection of individualized songs. It takes you on a wonderful emotional arc, from the upbeat “Pretty Time Bomb” to the lush and mysterious “See You In Dreams” to the reflective “Can’t See Straight.” You never feel the urge to skip to the next track, and even if the songwriting feels like it’s not Phillips’s best, the production is enough to keep you hooked all the way through.