Shawn Phillips is an artist of such raw talent, ambition and good will that I would have expected some growth as a songwriter over the course of five albums. Unhappily, Bright White, the fifth, is no improvement. Phillips continues to bandy words like "polyglot" and "entropy" amid garbled and prolonged tracts designed to lead us toward godliness and away from Armageddon. His words inevitably overpower his music; among ten songs, not one has a distinctive melody. Only a genius like Joni Mitchell can integrate stream-of-consciousness lyrics and music into songs that are structurally coherent, and Phillips is no Mitchell, his imagery being an indiscriminate potpourri of rococo fantasy and hip cliche. If Phillips wishes his work ever to be taken seriously, a drastic commitment to a simpler, more disciplined writing style should be the sole direction of his creative energy, coupled with a change to a producer less indulgent than Jonathan Weston. At this point, Phillips' main attraction is still his voice. Reedy and flexible, with a remarkable falsetto, it is a potent dramatic instrument. (RS 153)

STEPHEN HOLDEN