It would be an odd statement on the nature of 2012 if the two best albums were genre exercises, Spider Bags return to Garage Rock and Jack Phillips re-birth of the great American Songbook. Odd but distinctly possible.
Phillips wrote one of the best albums of 2010, To Whom It May Concern, a piano based early 1970s influenced singer songwriter flawless take on where Elton John once was. Indeed, as an Elton fan, Phillips work was better than anything the human jukebox had written in decades. Phillips was not quite influenced and more wrote modern songs in a long past genre.
And that's what he does on the just about flawless Cafe Nights In New York. From the opening "Take Me To Manhattan" with a lovely gasping trumpet solo followed by a piano solo, all the way through to the bass walking last song finale, this is a trip through the Manhattan of both the 1940s, when jazz giants wrote the American standards, to the mid-1990s, as cabaret made one last stand. With Feinsteins looking to move and Oak Room already over and done, the Bobby Short years feel like a study in nostalgia.
Phillips is a Shortsfan and that is crystal clear on the opening track, a wink at "I'll Take Manhattan" and a better ode to the Island than anything Jay-Z will ever write. It is so timeless, it is the essence of New York Jazz -a smooth American pop not heard any more outside of Fred Astaire movie marathons (do they even exist any more?). Phillips has a wonderful voice and it is as service to these completely timeless melodies, his voice is easy and warm, and he can swing it or dally with purpose.
This all comes together on the astounding "The Old Top Hat" -a rag time dance song with a chorus that works a variation on a Robert Sherman song, and a a wonderful rhyme for the chorus. And a great saz solo. I can't even express the greatness of this song. Here, if nowhere else, he gives his heroes a game of it. When you first listen to the album, you keep waiting for the mask to slip, as though you are in a Mission Impossible TV show where they convince some criminal he has gone back in time so they can find where he has buried the money, but it never happens. Phillips has us suspend our disbelief for oa little over half an hour and we owe him for it.
But elsewhere Phillips has a weakness and that is his lyric. They are just too prosaic for the great American, he tries for an ease an simplicity but simply saying isn't evoking. It hurts his songs a little, enough to be noticed, enough to wish he maybe worked with a lyricist from time to time.
Having said that, with the exception of a tweak here and there, it is hard to imagine
1. Cafe Nights In New York being better
2. Anybody except Jack Phillips being capable of actually doing it.
When they reopen Feinstein's they give Phillips a residency. The man is a gift to our great Island and this is timeless and beautiful American pop. Somebody buy that man a drink.
Grade: A