2016 Review: Jay Leo Phillips

This is part of a 2016 Year in Review of yk Records releases... a healthy reminder to catch-up if you don't know them already.

My initial familiarity with Jay Leo Phillips came from seeing his band Apollo Up! play around Nashville in the mid-2000's and thinking they were, hands down, the best band the city had to offer. Jay eventually joined Forget Cassettes and then And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead and then moved to Germany for a few years. I assumed I wouldn't ever get to hear much new from him after that.

A few years past and Jay moved back to Nashville and we started discussed putting out a solo record from him. After toiling over it for some time, the results are One Million, One Million, One Million, an album of songs composed, performed and recorded entirely by Jay. It's available on grey vinyl and streaming all over. The album is, clearly, a departure from anything Jay has done previously; both in terms of the production style and the musicality of the thing. It's a rock record; complete with rock record level energies, building tensions, chanting refrains and plenty of danceable bits but it feels like the strange cousin of your standard rock record. There's lots of keyboards, programmed drums and a sparse grit on everything that keeps you from officially filing it under Rock. I can't explain it and I'm happy about that.