Grant-Lee Phillips

★★★★ All That You Can Dream YEP ROC. CD/DL/LP

Former Grant Lee Buffalo man spins gold from “staggering” recent events on eleventh solo album.

Off the road and canny enough to promote 2020’s Lightning, Show

Us Your Stuff via home livestreams, a restless, domiciled Phillips was always going to get busy. He’s surpassed himself with this intimate late flourish, where the burning of Notre Dame, the ugly 2021 storming of the US Capitol and the hubris of space-bound billionaires feeding into 11 searching, beautifully rendered songs which rhythm section Jay Bellerose and Jennifer Condos finesse with artful subtlety. If the Only Living Boy In New York-like pitch and roll of Rats In A Barrel and pump organ-adorned Peace Is A Delicate Thing entrance, it’s because, songwriting-wise, Phillips knows where the jewels are stashed, and how to turn the safe lock ’til it clicks. Witness My Eyes Have Seen, a graceful, hymnlike exploration of inhumanity at the US/Mexico border.