Far more interesting than its two predecessors (Contribution and Second Contribution), Shawn Phillips' Collaboration makes an ambitious bid for the Heaviest Hollywood Saturday Night Trip Award, steeped as it is with engineering gimmickry and the enthusiasm of the collaborators (Paul Buck-master and Peter Robinson) to "try anything." And in this instance anything is a much greater commitment to...

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...

Shawn Phillips's decision to shelve his acoustic guitar in favor of a double-necked electric backfired. It not only alienated many of his older followers but also laid bare his own limitations as a composer and lyricist. Do You Wonder seeks a middle ground, with one side mellow and folky, the other brassy and rocking. Though the acoustic side generally makes it, it succeeds more by comparison to...