Grant-Lee Phillips: Mobilize; Grant Lee Buffalo: Storm Hymnal

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

Mobilize: * * * *

Storm Hymnal * * * *

There were some good ideas in rock left unruined and largely unnoticed as the 90s ended and Grant Lee Buffalo - the band led by California singer-songwriter Grant-Lee Phillips - was one of them. The band, though, didn't survive beyond the decade, folding after four studio albums and a memorable performance at our ill-fated Sweetwaters festival.

Now, Phillips has taken his supple, Bowie-ish voice and literate folk-rock songwriting into a solo career.

On his first post-band outing, that means Phillips has swapped the increasingly baroque backings of his group's albums for a mix of something intimate, soul-shaped, groovier, and more electronically oriented. Rather than hollering over the hard-strumming rustic rock of the Buffalo days, Phillips and his new song have that elegant voice at their centre.

Phillips still writes for the wide-screen, musing as he has before on a mythical USA in the daydreamy opener See America or pondering what a nasty old world it is, so sweetly on Humankind.

But it's on the emotionally bruised tracks like the electro-blues Like a Lover, the conspiratorial weirdness of the title track, or the bass-driven Sadness Soot that Mobilize shows its hand. Add We All Get a Taste (U2 meets Young Americans Bowie) and Spring Released (Ziggy vs the Beach Boys) and you've got yourself a strangely lovely solo album.

Many never quite caught up with his old band again after their attention-getting 1993 debut album Fuzzy, so the compilation Storm Hymnal is a fine recap with four tracks apiece from the original LPs.

From the early strident folk-rock The Shining Hour and Lone Star Song to the tracks from swansong LP Jubilee, it shows Grant Lee Buffalo's brand of big music still sets them as a band apart and one worth rediscovering.

* Grant-Lee Phillips plays at Tabac, Auckland next Friday and Saturday.