Grant-Lee Phillips – In the Hour of Dust (Yep Roc) (13th Floor Album Review)
Grant-Lee Phillips is a songwriter who moves between the intimate and the expansive. From the widescreen alt-rock of Grant Lee Buffalo to the quieter folk of his solo records, he places private anxieties within a larger frame of history, myth and politics. In the Hour of Dust, his twelfth solo album, continues in that spirit.
Phillips began the songs at home in Nashville, then developed them in Los Angeles with Jay Bellerose, whose percussion adds texture and momentum, Jennifer Condos, whose bass provides warmth and grounding, and Patrick Warren, who brings an orchestral sweep on piano and keyboards. Together they expand Phillips’ hushed demos into something more layered without losing intimacy.
The album opens with urgency. Little Men comes charging in with fast-strummed guitars and martial drums, creating a sense of barely contained chaos. The lyric speaks of emancipation, of breaking free from “little men who want to rule like Caesar.” Phillips ties his belief in human resilience to the energy of the arrangement, which finally slows to a steadier strum, suggesting that uprising is as much about endurance as it is about fire.
Did You Make It Through the Night Okay shifts the focus to survival in another register. Drawing on his Muscogee (Creek) heritage, Phillips borrows the phrase Estonkon cukhayvtikv — “Did you make it through the night okay?” — a morning greeting infused with dark humour and resilience. The music, with its stop-start patterns and tightly wound vocal phrasing, reflects both instability and persistence. Closer Tonight is more hushed, its gentle instrumentation and voice drawing the listener close, as the words express unease about technology’s power and humanity’s potential for self-destruction. The contrast between soothing arrangement and anxious lyric creates a haunting irony.
Elsewhere Phillips turns to personal history. Bullies recalls the cruelty of the schoolyard and broadens it into a comment on the way bullies grow into positions of power. The refrain “just can’t give in to them” is delivered like a mantra, direct but also somewhat blunt in its repetition. Stories We Tell is lighter on the surface, almost jaunty, but beneath its rhythm lies a theme of the damaging myths we tell ourselves about not being enough. She Knows Me is among the most personal songs, with Phillips admitting “sometimes I’m full of doubt” and thanking the partner who steadies him when his thoughts spiral. The song hangs in the air, bare and vulnerable. Someone continues this mood of intimacy, circling slowly as if caught in its own orbit. The lyric “someone who hurts like you” captures the longing for true connection in a world that often isolates, the pacing reflecting that sense of waiting and searching.
The later songs broaden the view again. No Mistaking begins with assertive rhythm before softening into something more tender, its chorus declaring “this is love, what everyone is dreaming of.” The sentiment is heartfelt, though the phrasing risks cliché compared with the sharper detail of verses that recall the shared weight of years. Dark Ages contemplates endurance, insisting that even the most difficult times are transitional. Its line “the die isn’t cast, we’re still throwing the bones” captures Phillips’ mixture of realism and hope. American Lions is perhaps the most vivid piece here, using the image of Ice Age lions once roaming Los Angeles as a metaphor for time and change. References to tar pits, rooftops and fires make this one of his richest lyrical evocations. Finally, Last Corner of the Earth closes the record with steady drum and clear, declarative vocal, urging perseverance in the face of upheaval.
Phillips is a lyricist of imagery, able to turn a striking phrase and to anchor his reflections in both personal and historical experience. His use of Muscogee language brings his heritage directly into the fabric of the album. His songs of love are plainspoken in ways that cut through, even when they risk sentimentality. At times the music does not match the complexity of the words. Patterns built around strummed guitar dominate, lending unity but also leaving the arrangements less adventurous than the lyrics that meditate on survival, love and political challenge.
In the Hour of Dust is a record of songs for love and for protest, through which Phillips urges us to find meaning in resilience, humour and connection at a time when the dust prevents us from seeing clearly.
John Bradbury
In The Hour Of Dust is out Friday, Sept 5 on Yep Roc Records.
