With Don’t Do Anything, Sam Phillips‘ third album for Nonesuch Records, the songwriter has struck out on her own with a work that’s among her most challenging to date, and it reveals that she’s held on to the gifts that have made her one of the most rewarding singer/songwriters of her generation while adding fresh accents as she follows her muse with commendable courage and clarity.

Musically, these 12 originals slot in neatly alongside the intimate grooves of Fan Dance and 2004’s A Boot And A Shoe, they introduce an important new wrinkle. Written entirely by Phillips, for the first time since 1987, Phillips went with a producer other than her longtime creative foil (and now ex-husband) T Bone Burnett: Herself.

Phillips’ albums are thematic the way pieces of fine art are; unique and often beautiful, but not immediately coherent or comprehensible. She is charmingly eccentric, using abstraction as a paintbrush, leaving plenty of room for interpretation, but strangely, never alienating. She is in search in progressing further still and concentrating on texture. Mixed so instruments are often heard at curious, uneven levels, Don’t Do Anything sounds humble, homemade. Instead of meticulous chamber pieces, these selections are arranged like shoebox dioramas. It’s about tiny details: The metallic buzzing of strings; percussion generated on what sounds like cardboard boxes full of blankets, or mason-jar maracas.
Highlights are plentiful - the coda of “Under The Night” dissolves into crackling guitar noise. These touches are as vital to the fabric of the album as its songs and their singer. “Can’t Come Down” seems like a remnant from the near-perfect, A Boot And A Shoe, utilizing a strong guitar and drum combination as Phillips declares: “I can’t come down for the shame and fear / Can’t come down ’cause I can see from here / I’ve got a great work to do and I can’t come down.”
“Another Song” and the album’s title track, “Don’t Do Anything” are perfectly placed side-by-side, barely a gap between the two as to sound like one seamless track. And how perfect too; ‘Another Song’ opens with her Dictaphone, and then her piano with Phillips asking poignantly, “Did you ever love me?“. At its final breath, the electric strumming and thumping of the title track comes through, with Phillips singing, “I love you when you don’t do anything.”
‘Little Plastic Life’ begins with a simplistic, but robust and satisfying percussion of drums, guitar and violin before jumping into an incredibly infectious chorus.
“Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us” a song written by Sam Phillips and previously recorded by Alison Krauss and Robert Plant for their 2007 album, Raising Sand, was inspired by gospel singer, Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Like, “Can’t Come Down” it too sounds a song that could’ve lived on Phillips’ A Boot And A Shoe.

Don’t Do Anything builds upon the traits that made Phillips’ two preceding albums so wonderful, but adds an extra layer of depth and instrumentation. Here, Phillips has effortlessly pulled the best pieces of all of her previous albums into one complete experience.

Don’t Do Anything
by Sam Phillips
Original Release Date: June 10, 2008
Number of Discs: 1
Label: Nonesuch
Buy Album: Click Here

Can’t Come Down