Grant-Lee Phillips
nineteeneighties

What makes your heart race? In these dark times of war, in Europe (because it has always been around the world), of economic and social crisis, of cultural crisis and functional illiteracy. In these times of followers, social media managers, likes, pervasive food photos, TikTokers, influencers, digital invasion of every human and spiritual space, what makes your heart race?

In these times of cynicism, addiction, false and at-all-costs transgression, sarcasm, rampant individualism, and rejection of everything humanistic, in the sense of what puts man at the center and in an elevated position, what makes your heart race?

One of the things that makes my heart race - not the only one, fortunately - is music, evidently, otherwise I wouldn't be here wasting time in front of a computer to write ideas and feelings in the hope of making them understandable to another human being as well as better focusing them in a sort of personal diary. Because, as we know, writing is a process that requires reflection, analysis, and synthesis. To tell the truth, music not only shakes the heart but also everything else, the brain, guts, and skin. Yes, even the soul, if it exists.

Another thing that makes my heart race, at least from time to time, is nostalgia. And I believe the "pain of returning" makes the heart race even for Grant Lee Phillips, at least from time to time.

I am convinced of this because it must have been nostalgia that pushed him, in 2006, to release an album like Nineteeneighties, which is nothing more than a time machine for the lost, allowing chrono-travelers to move in only one direction, towards the past and, moreover, towards a single specific decade, the one in which he was formed and grew as a musician. Which one it is, it's easy to guess from the title.

Grant Lee (who, interestingly, reconciles in his name the surnames of the winner and the loser of the American Civil War) doesn't hide having gathered in this album his favorite songs from the 80s. Eleven covers of New Wave tracks (in a broad sense) that will seem immediately familiar to many, if not all, chosen from the repertoire of Pixies, New Order, Joy Division, Robyn Hitchcock, Echo and the Bunnymen, Psychedelic Furs, Church, Nick Cave, REM, Cure, and Smiths.

Phillips approaches this material with love and respect, favoring acoustic arrangements rather than an electric sound more akin to the original style, blending the tracks in an atmosphere of enchanting melancholy that suits the artist's attitude, favoring the prevalence of that sense of nostalgia I was talking about, especially for those who have already lived these songs.

Not everything is perfect on this album; there are more successful and less successful versions, but the few imperfections are smoothed out in the general context of great homogeneity, due not only to the fact that Phillips plays most of the instruments and, not content, mixes and produces the album, but also thanks to his sensitivity in bringing the songs out of their original context, stripping them down and laying bare their essence.

Grant Lee Phillips, a Californian from Stockton, after the Shiva Burlesque (with whom he records two albums) forms with bassist Paul Kimble and drummer Joey Peters the Grant Lee Buffalo who, in 1993, release their debut album Fuzzy and the following year Mighty Joe Moon, their two best works, characterized by the alternation of acoustic moments and electric explosions reminiscent of Neil Young and the Dream Syndicate. In 1998, after opening REM's Monster World Tour concerts and after two other albums of lesser quality than the first ones, the band disbands and Grant Lee starts his solo career.

Nineteeneighties is Phillips' fourth album, which could have been an honest cover album choosing from a more congenial repertoire to him as he did, for example, in the Buffalo days with Neil Young's "For the Turnstiles." Instead, Nineteeneighties selects songs that have no evident relation to the Grant Lee Buffalo catalog, nor with Grant Lee's solo works.

Phillips opens the album with "Wave of Mutilation" by the Pixies, extremely slowed down with the slide guitar embroidering over the acoustic base, played as if we were enjoying the sunset on Waikiki beach with a Pina Colada in hand and a Hawaiian lei around our neck. And from this first track, one of the elements that determine the album's success is noticeable, namely the choice of easily recognizable songs that, even when deconstructed and rearranged in Phillips' style, remain identifiable. A very different choice and perhaps a "smarter" one than the one made by Nick Cave in Kicking against the Pricks, another cover album where, except for "Hey Joe" and "All Tomorrow's Parties," less known songs were chosen.

The other element that makes Nineteeneighties a great album is the perfectly successful attempt to make it sound as much as possible like an album of original Grant Lee Phillips tracks. In fact, Nineteeneighties integrates well with the rest of the author's discography, as he not only reinterprets these songs but changes the tempo, modifies the melody, and substitutes instruments while keeping their essence intact. And this is no small feat. Even if perhaps the only valid consideration is that a good song remains a good song, always and in any case.

"Age Of Consent" by New Order is one of the gems of this album, with an acoustic guitar riff that seems taken from "You Can't Always Get What You Want" by the Stones and accompanied by a soft keyboard and cello. Close relatives of the New Order are the Joy Division of the following "The Eternal," which perhaps, despite the marvelous harmonica accompaniment, remains one of the less successful moments, but probably my assessment is influenced by the fact that I don't particularly love the original. Another little gem is "I Often Dream Of Trains" by Robyn Hitchcock, which is transformed from a Barret-like nursery rhyme into gothic folk. Beautiful also is the cover of "The Killing Moon" by Echo And The Bunnymen, faithful to the original, but slowed down and acoustic, practically the unplugged and intimate version. "Love My Way" by the Psychedelic Furs, in its custom-made acoustic dress, appears more sober and charming than the original, while "Under the Milky Way" by the Church, by its nature, fits perfectly into the scenery created by Phillips. The folk-blues of Cave's "City Of Refuge" loses the overwhelming and devilish charge of the original, transforming into a captivating and dark western ballad, perfect soundtrack for a Joe Lansdale novel and an appropriate introduction to a much darker "So Central Rain (I'm Sorry)" than the R.E.M. version. "Boys Don't Cry" by the Cure, characterized by the sound of the ukulele and a toy piano, genuinely seems played with the toy instruments from the original video. The setlist closes with an intense "Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me" by the Smiths, which, however, according to the writer, is inferior to the original, in which the electric arrangement and Johnny Marr's guitar provide the right charge without which the track seems excessively "whiny".

In any case, Nineteeneighties is a beautiful album, performed impeccably, that if composed of original material, I wouldn't hesitate to define an absolute masterpiece. One of the few cover albums that manages to respect the spirit of the tracks while treating them with originality.

Ethereal and darkly romantic, Nineteeneighties is a dreamlike journey into the past that Phillips - a modern Pied Piper of Hamelin - makes for himself and to guide all those who want to be enchanted and want to lose themselves (for 43 minutes) in his dreamy 80s.