Singer-songwriter Sam Phillips will release her fifth secular record, A Boot and a Shoe, in April. The set follows 2001's acclaimed torch-pop set Fan Dance, and Phillips says that the two albums are of a like. "This is Fan Dance's evil twin," she says. "In some ways it's a reinvention more than a different direction."

Phillips could do worse than return to the sound of Fan Dance. The record was produced, as all of her recent recordings have been, by husband T Bone Burnett, who placed Phillips' dusty, expressive voice amid spare arrangements that included intricate guitar playing by Mark Ribot along with cellos and glimmers of other strings. "It's more about sketching that filling out every detail," she says of the sound, a departure from Fan Dance's predecessor, 1996's synthy Omnipop. "I've made very produced records in the past. But I like to suggest things and let the listener fill things in."

"I just love the way she sings," Burnett said last year. "I love the artifice of her singing. And I wanted the arrangements to stay clear of her voice. [Fan Dance] is my favorite record I've ever done."

As for the new set, Phillips says that Burnett "ventured to say that he likes Boot better than Fan Dance, but you have your head in a record so long, you never know. It's a great compliment, regardless."

Boot does find Phillips, who gave up a successful run in the Contemporary Christian market as Leslie Phillips more than fifteen years ago, still in a comfort zone, more so than a decade ago when Martinis and Bikinis was released to critical kudos, but as a smartly written and played pop album, it failed to create any sort of sales tsunami. "Somebody once told me if you don't love it enough to do it for free, maybe you shouldn't be doing it," she says. "I think the music is getting better now that there's less bottom line turmoil."

Phillips has also found some new success outside of record making, as she's peppered episodes of The Gilmore Girls with her recognizable "la la la"-based music. And while that work echoes the more pop-oriented Martinis, with the new record and Fan Dance she's going for a darker palette.

"It's basically torch music," she says. "Torch as in tortured and torch as in carrying a torch for someone, which I guess means you love someone and they don't love you. And you have hope anyway, which is the worst thing you can have. But if you love long enough and get worn out, then you can finally able to see what's next and the world can open to you. It's a composite of a lot of pain that's mostly romantically inclined. But it's also about what happens next."

The title also speaks to those themes, though as she is wont to do, Phillips injects a bit of playfulness into it. "The title also captures that sense of being off balance and opposites, men and women," she says. "But there was also some song the Rolling Stones did, where they said something like, 'You're so country that when I first met you, you were wearing a boot and a shoe.' I always liked that."

Phillips is planning to take the album out for some dates summer where she will perform both Boot and Fan Dance in their entirety.

Track list for A Boot and a Shoe:

How to Quit
All Night
I Dreamed I Stopped Dreaming
Open the World
Red Silk #5
Reflecting Light
Infiltration
Drawman
I Wanted to Be Alone
Love Changes Everything
If I Could Write

ANDREW DANSBY
(February 23, 2004)