Glen Phillips at the Fox

Hey kids, remember that band Toad the Wet Sprocket? I do, too. They had a bunch of songs on the radio during the early to mid 90’s. My sister introduced me to their music when I was a lowly high school sophomore (“walk on the water, step on the stones”). I remember eagerly anticipating the release of Dulcinea. It became one of my favorite albums during that period of my life and I consider it to be one of the best albums of the 1990’s. Windmills, Nanci, and Fly From Heaven are amazing songs. Glen Phillips’ voice is unique, expressive, and pitch-perfect. When Toad disbanded in the late 90’s, Glen continued his songwriting as a solo artist. He released Abulum in 2001, followed by Winter Pays For Summer in 2005, and Mr. Lemons in 2006. He also has a live album and two EP’s. The newest EP (and his latest work) is called Secrets of the New Explorers. I’ll get to that in a bit.

Glen played a concert at the beautiful Fox Theater in Boulder, Colorado on Sunday night. Since I don’t have any friends, I went by myself. I needed to get out of my apartment, and what better opportunity to do that than to attend a Glen Phillips concert (I was also hoping to meet some Boulder chicks, but to no avail). There were probably about 200 people in attendance. A musician named jonathan Kingham opened the show. I spell his name with a lower case j here because he told us that’s how he likes it spelled. He played some of his own songs and a cover of Bobby Brown’s Every Little Step, during which he performed a hilarious freestyle rap about Suburus, sushi, and such. He is a very entertaining performer and a great songwriter. His between song banter was witty and humorous. He joined Glen on stage for a few songs during Glen’s set; his backup vocals and guitar playing really complemented the tunes.

Glen’s set was awesome. Just vocals and acoustic guitar. I’m not going to go into a song by song synopsis; I’ll just provide a few of my observations. He opened with a really depressing but beautiful song entitled Marigolds. As he continued through his set, a few people in the crowd kept shouting out requests for Toad songs. Glen finally (and rightfully) told them that if they wanted to only hear Toad songs, they were at the wrong concert. He explained that the more that people request Toad songs, the less he wants to play them and that he has written hundreds of fucking songs since the Toad days. I couldn’t agree more. I really like his post-Toad solo albums. I think he has improved as a songwriter. He did play a few Toad songs including Windmills, Walk on the Water, Nanci, and All I Want. They were great. But my favorite songs of the set were Everything But You and Marigolds from Mr. Lemons, Duck and Cover from Winter Pays For Summer, Fred Meyers and Train Wreck (my all-time favorite Glen Phillips song) from Abulum, and Solar Flare from Secrets of the New Explorers. He also played a couple of songs from an upcoming project that he said might be called The Scrolls (featuring members from Nickel Creek and Benmont Tench of The Heartbreakers). I’m really looking forward to the new material. The entire show was recorded and made available for purchase a few minutes after the last song. I bought a copy and am very impressed with how good it sounds.

Back to the new EP. Secrets of the New Explorers is comprised of six tracks based on the theme of privatized space travel. It deals with alienation, commercialism, murder, love, and death. This is one of my favorite records of the year (it's still early, but I'm sure it'll be there at the end of the year). Solar Flare begins with the verse, “Goodnight moon, goodnight air, goodnight captain in the captain’s chair, goodbye teeth and goodbye hair, you were taken by the solar flare” and continues in a catchy, sing-along fashion. I love it. The only thing about this album that I hate is that it so closely resembles the project I’ve been working on for the past five years. I wrote a concept album, an entire album based around the idea of a lone spaceman that everyone forgets about, whom no one cares about, who ends up drifting through space while thinking about his wasted opportunities and what he would do over again if he could. One of the songs, To Disengage At Last, is posted on my myspace page. I’ve posted others in the past and hope to finalize the album soon. Who knows…maybe Glen Phillips will listen to it, like it, and help make me famous? Maybe not.

If you get a chance to see Glen Phillips, forget about your perceived indie credibility and go. “Get undressed in the mesosphere, get hot in the thermosphere.”