"Charming and Dangerous"

My collegue-in-blogging Clint M. pointed me to this review of Sam Phillips’s “A Boot and a Shoe,” which includes this excellent description of Sam’s work:

And here is what is the most charming and dangerous aspect of Sam Phillips: she does it all to your mind with her songs. She doesn’t have to warble and work a song to death to prove her talent, no hamstrung histrionics necessary. Today’s overproduced Diva-ettes can’t thrill you unless they’re paraded half-dressed in the video. Their songs, when taken on their own, are as passionate and daring as shopping for pants. The vocabulary is stunted with hoary couplets like “girl/world”, “heart/torn apart” and the occasional cussword and demand for gratification. It’s kind of wonderful to know that there are still songwriters out there that do it for the sake of music, and Phillips most certainly is there among them.