One More for the Owl...returning to Gabriel Miller Phillips

This probably the best self-release I've had all year.

Gabriel Miller Phillips
One For the Owl
(Self-Released)


Gabriel Miller Phillips' debut is a collection of ghostly, melancholy songs, begun, it seems on acoustic guitar, but fleshed out at times with spectral guitar effects. The sometime ballet dancer, sidelined with a tibial bone inflection, turned to songwriting at a dark intersection in his life, a period when he could hardly walk for pain.

That era produced his first EP Shoot the Moon, yet even now, a couple of years later, you get the sense of persistence through trouble, epiphany through disappointment and discomfort. These songs track lonely, late-night snow-trails through wintery Boston ("Memorial Drive") and diffident, unsuccessful attempts at connection ("Last Dance") with elegiac grace.

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Gabriel Miller Phillips

Beautifully understated pop from this Massachusetts songwriter, who has a soft, diffident voice but a very sharp way with words ... a la Elliott Smith I guess, though he doesn't really sound like him. Self-released One for the Crow is his first full-length, following the EP Shoot the Moon. He worked with Alex Lipsen of Phosphorescent to record it.

"Star Crossed"