Strangelet

iTunes Review

No one gives sweeter voice to the dueling forces of heartache and optimism, love and loss, than the modern-day troubadour Grant-Lee Phillips, late of the 90s band Grant Lee Buffalo. On Strangelet, his fifth solo album, Phillips plays most every instrument from ukelele to organ, but the real star is as always that dreamy tenor, transforming every note with a wistful, almost erotic languor. The lush, dependably hook-laden folk-rock melodies draw on a host of musical influences but manage to sound in the end like no one else. “Johnny Guitar” channels the brash rhythms of T. Rex, while “Raise the Spirit” melds Bolan with Lennon to raucous effect. “Dream in Color” combines mid-period REM with a lovely Beatlesque orchestral interlude, “Killing a Dead Man” recalls 70s-era Neil Young, and the alt-country-ish “Soft Asylum” with its soaring chorus just might be the radio hit that’s always eluded Phillips. A strangelet, according to Phillips, is a subatomic fragment of “strange” or “quark” matter, tiny yet dense and volatile enough to cause earthquakes. This Strangelet is its own kind of seismic event: not earth-shattering, perhaps, but exerting its own bittersweet pull.