CD Reviews

Various Artists | Phil Spector Presents the Phillies Album Collection

Legacy (2011)

By ZETH LUNDY | November 2, 2011

2.5 Stars

Before finding infamy as a perm-'fro courtroom crazy, the guy who held the Ramones at gunpoint, or the dude who dared helm murky post-Beatles waters, Phil Spector was synonymous with '60s-pop Wall of Sound production. He was Wall of Sound, a girl-group savant who helped propel bubblegum pop into the realm of the profound. Though its attractively packaged mass would indicate otherwise, the seven-disc Phil Spector Presents the Philles Album Collection fails to provide a complete picture of said Wall. First, the focus here is on full-length LPs issued on Spector's Philles label, but Spector's singular talent was the singles market. Therefore, for every "Be My Baby" or "He's a Rebel," one must sit through the likes of "The Wah Watusi," "Frankenstein Twist," "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah," etc. Second, groups like the Righteous Brothers and Ike & Tina Turner are absent, which would explain why three of the discs in this set are records by the Crystals. (Those records share a lot of recycled material, FYI.) The disc seven "Phil's Flipsides," a Wrecking Crew comp of surf-pop instrumental b-sides, is a nice if inconsequential addition, but in all the set doesn't hit enough of those extraordinary pop highs to do its subject total justice.

| More

Most Popular

The Current Issue

Table of Contents

Cover Archive

Masthead | Authors | Contact us

Blogs

Where To Follow Me
Talking Politics | March 24, 2013 at 11:09 AM

Mo Takes His Turn
March 21, 2013 at 12:59 PM

[Q&A] KMFDM's Sascha Konietzko on art, Columbine and having balls
On The Download | March 18, 2013 at 3:22 PM

See this film series: The Belmont World Film Series @ Studio Cinema in Belmont
Outside The Frame | March 18, 2013 at 11:00 AM

See this film: This is Spinal Tap [with post-film talk by expert from Acoustical Society of America] @ the Coolidge
March 17, 2013 at 12:00 PM

ARTICLES BY ZETH LUNDY

BROWN BIRD | FITS OF REASON | March 18, 2013
Brown Bird, a boundary-pushing Americana duo from Rhode Island, make music that touches upon that can't-put-my-finger-on-it amalgamation of past and future sounds.

NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS | PUSH THE SKY AWAY | February 20, 2013
Much like the similarly low-key The Boatman's Call , Cave's highly anticipated 15th album with the Bad Seeds manages the puzzling feat of making a great band seem inconsequential, if not entirely absent.

SCOTT WALKER | BISH BOSCH | November 27, 2012
Scott Walker's late-period about-face is one of the strangest in the annals of pop music.

BILL WITHERS | THE COMPLETE SUSSEX AND COLUMBIA ALBUMS | October 31, 2012
Bill Withers has always been the down-to-earth, odd-man-out of the '70s soul brothers: he's the one who came bearing a lunch box on the cover of his relaxed 1971 debut, Just as I Am .

R.E.M. | DOCUMENT [25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION] | September 19, 2012
Fans of R.E.M. enjoy arguing over which album was the band's true shark-jump, but 1987's Document was inarguably the end of a groundbreaking era.