| Phil Circle's blues and jazz-inflected
rock band, Guilty, has been haunting the suburbs of Chicago for the better part of the
last decade. But Circle's career was actually born in New Mexico, where he cut his teeth
as a singer-songwriter, testing his own ability to keep the attention of coffee house
audiences as far from his home in Brookfield, Illinois as possible. He passed his own
test, and since 1992 Circle has bared his material before friends and neighbors at various
clubs closer to home.
The group has evolved through a number of
various incarnations (10-piece, 7-piece, 5-piece), snatching musical influence from
sources as disparate as rock-n-roll founding fathers like the Who, blues and jazz masters
and the jam bands of the 1970s. Circle is not as strong a songwriter as the bands he
emulates, and some of the extended jams aren't really extending tunes worthy of the
extension (case in point: the somewhat languorous "Any Worth at All," which
recalls some of the more self-absorbed and unfocused jam sessions of Rusted Root). At its
best, however, Guilty evokes the wild collage spirit of modern eclectic jam heroes like
Poi Dog Pondering and the Dave Matthews Band. "Can't Keep Myself Away," for
example, deliciously combines basic rock drums with hot piping ska brass, jazzy
counterpoint and hot rhythm guitar, a tight, engaging and fresh sound which distracts from
any lack of inspiration in the sometimes predictable lyrics. The similarly titled
"Can't Take Anymore" is also similar to "Can't Keep Myself" in its
successfully driving eclecticism. It makes terrific use of Inderjeet Sidhu's raging
worldbeat percussion. Orbert Davis' Latin horn flares peek over the corners of the stanzas
with danceable bugle-call alarmism and ominous sexy slinkiness.
While Circle is an impressive guitarist and a
gifted vocalist (recalling at times the delicate, deceptively bitter, well-trained
baritone of Morrissey), his greatest gift seems to be his skill in casting musicians. The
album's production is credited to "Grassroots Productions, Inc." (Circle and
Sean Morrison share credits as executive producers), so it's unclear who to thank for the
skillful arrangements. But thanks are somewhere due. The less inventive the
arrangements, the more grating uninspired rhymes like "you're lying/again/you're
lying/and then" become. At their best, his songs are entertaining forums for the
creative noodling of the band, well-matched to the emotional tone of the instrumentation
(on "Except for
Today," the tongue-in-cheek tale of a relationship of temporary convenience is
amusingly colored by Suzanne Lansford's vaguely Turtle Islandesque jazzy fiddling and the
nimble light-hearted noodling of Circle's own guitar). At their worst, the songs rather
drone.
I'd love to hear Circle and these Grassroots
Production people collaborate on a creative cover album, doing jazz standards and tunes by
some infallible rock writers. In the meantime, Extenuating Circumstances gets
increasingly likeable on repeated listens, and the album seems to promise an exciting live
show.
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