Sunday, March 4, 2012

RECORD REVIEWS.(PREVIEW)

POP ``Jubilee.'' Grant Lee Buffalo. (Slash/Warner Bros.) ``Jubilee'' opens with an unusual declaration: ``I put an APB on you tonight, searchlights citywide.'' An extravagant length to go to retrieve a vanished love, perhaps, but Grant Lee Phillips doesn't sing like a panicked man. He delivers that line, and subsequent ones, as a kind of confession, an acknowledgement of deep obsession he's hardly proud of.

The metaphysical search that starts with ``APB'' continues, in one way or another, through the 14 songs on this vital collection, the most consistently rewarding of four GLB titles and the first without bassist Paul Kimball. Phillips' voice, which evokes the bitterness of early Elton John and the languor of late John Lennon, gives his lyrics an urgency: He's plagued by regret, haunted by doubts that hang around the corners of his songs. His characters are in pursuit of an unknowable destiny -- or at least a quiet …

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