[LISTEN UP]

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REVIEWS BY GARY C.W. CHUN / STAR-BULLETIN

BEYOND
Jill Sobule continues to be a fine singer-
songwriter six years after her first hit.

Sobule, Phillips return
for another 15 minutes

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HERE ARE TWO immensely talented singer-songwriters who survived the music industry's star-making machinery -- and continue to create and release CDs worthy of your time and your hard-earned "leisure" cash. It's just that you won't be seeing their mugs on MTV anytime soon.

It's because they've already had their 15 minutes; Sobule, back in '95, with her winning tale of carefree sexuality, "I Kissed a Girl," and Phillips as the front man for Toad the Wet Sprocket. But in 1997, Sobule was dropped from her major label, and Toad disbanded.

Sobule, ever the crafty survivor, has carried on her recording career with Beyond, a small Hollywood independent label, home of other long-term acts such as the Go-Go's, Yes, Sammy Hagar and (yikes!) Motley Crue. She still tours extensively, both as a solo act and as lead guitarist for Lloyd Cole's band.

Her latest album serves as both a retrospective and re-evaluation of her career, all boiling down to "a cool album with a bunch of my best songs for people to hear all the time," said Sobule in a press release.

"I Never Learned to Swim: Jill Sobule 1990-2000"
Jill Sobule (Beyond)

"Abulum"
Glen Phillips (Brick Red)

It's a smartly sequenced CD as well. Her big hit becomes just part and parcel of Sobule's entire repertoire, relegated to Track 12 of the 15-track album. She calls it her "K-Tel moment," and it's still three minutes and 11 seconds' worth of pop perfection.

Her contribution to a Laura Nyro tribute album kicks off the proceedings with her languid but funky cover of "Stoned Soul Picnic," made popular by the 5th Dimension. The remainder of her tunes show her to be a wry observer of the human condition (hers included) with a finely tuned pop sense. "When My Ship Comes In" and "Bitter" are telling commentaries of the cruel vagaries of the music business, her character studies "Claire" and "Margaret" are sympathetic without being maudlin, and her love songs "Houdini's Box," "Mexican Wrestler" and "Love Is Never Equal" are especially prescient.

One of the two new songs on the CD, "Big Shoes," relates her school-day tale of woe when she had to wear orthopedic shoes up to the eighth grade. My favorite verse on the entire CD is in this song -- "Kip O'Neil she had high heels/She went all the way/By the time I got up to bat/They called off the game."

While the immediate response to Sobule's collection is how it's such a wonderful batch of songs, Phillips's "Abulum" is a perfect nighttime album during those private, reflective hours of darkness.

His album is the result of a two-year hiatus after Toad the Wet Sprocket's disbandment and the death of his father. It was a time where he said he had to "lose my illusions in a big way," a long and arduous process where he immersed himself in darker feelings, sometimes obsessed by world destruction.

But don't worry, he's also contentedly married with two kids, and Phillips has learned to leaven his work with hope and humor, losing his capacity for youthful self-delusion as he enters his 30s.

Well, the only out-and-out funny song is "Drive By," where a father's desire to shoot an annoying dog and his son's wishful, selfish prayer for him not to is deftly woven together, exposing our capacity to comfort, forgive and lie to ourselves. "Fred Meyers" jauntily combines a "life is good" theme within a tale about the homeless.

Everything else is pretty much quiet and intense, going between personal tales of ache and deliverance ("Back on My Feet," "Darkest Hour" and "Maya") and dread, desolation and abandonment ("My Own Town" and "It Takes Time"). Two of his strongest songs: "Professional Victim," a cautionary tale about the cyclical nature of women in abusive relationships, and "Train Wreck," an especially fine, bittersweet song about having to deal with a female friend who seems to be consistently down on her luck.

You've got be in a particularly receptive mood to let "Abulum" settle into your psyche, but you will be richly rewarded for your patience.

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