Sam Phillips

Sam Phillips lives her musical life in a confessional, displaying a deeply personal and sometimes dark image of her inner life. Don’t Do Anything delves deeper into her world in songs that are rawer and more her own, perhaps due to her role as both writer and producer. We wander about inside Phillips’s head, moving from emotion to emotion with her. A collage of sepia-toned moments, like the warped tape playback opening of "Another Song” and the folky "Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us,” create a sense of history and memory. The dark seething of "No Explanations” lives in her glowering voice and deep melodies, demanding attention. There’s a certain whimsy to the "Little Plastic Life,” even as her life goes up in flames. Each listen brings out new facets and draws us in deeper until we’re living there, as uncomfortably as we might inside our own existences.