Reviews 2

Amplifier Magazine (USA) January 2003, Album Review - Will Harris
Philip Kane Songs for Swinging Lovers (Corrupt)
What exactly are you supposed to make of a guy who entitles his album Songs for Swinging Lovers then starts the proceedings with a track entitled "Me, the Ladyboy and Gloria Estefan"? You're probably thinking, okay, this is gonna be goofy. Except that, when the guy starts singing, he produces a soulful voice that's somewhere between Al Green, David McAlmont, and, hell, I don't know maybe even Jeff Buckley. Then, lyrically there are hints of Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, and even Paul Heaton of the Beautiful South. Take, for instance, these lines from 'Sally's Birthday'; "I'm sorry I said/When I pissed in your bed/It was your fault for keeping me drinking/But you know how I get/When my tonsils are wet/I was never much too good at standing." Sounds like Heaton to me! This is an unexpected treat of an album. The only disappointment is the lack of printed lyrics, particularly when every couplet is sprinkled with a dark wit and decided poignancy.

Energycastle on-line magazine
"A vocalist with the nuance of Al Green," states his press release, "Kane steals from Simone, Nico, Dylan, Shakespeare, Silvian and Cohen." Not many people can live up to their own hype. But then again, not many people are Philip Kane.

With his website offering "Evian bottle filled to the brim with genuine
Philip Kane piss," for a mere five pounds, one is alerted right away to
the fact that Kane is no ordinary soul crooner. Want further proof? "Due to a particularly noxious skin condition, Mr. Kane is not allowed physical contact with others," further states his site. So is Mr. Kane all piss and hives?

Not quite. From Tricky deadpan trip hop, ("Tonight") to full on soulful Marvin Gaye ("To Be Free"), to the vulgar beauty of his lyrics, "stolen" from literary geniuses like Charles Bukowski and Henry Miller, Philip Kane is an unrelenting songwriter full of spirit, perverse funk and crude soul. This is what the Afghan Whigs might have sounded like if they'd finally crossed that rock bridge into full on booty-shaking rhythm and blues before disappearing into the vast sea of formerly great bands of the Sup Pop era. Nevertheless, we still have the divine Mr. Kane. "Do you wanna have some fun?" he growls on the album's wonderfully schizophrenic fourth track behind a wall of screaming guitars.

Granted, at the album's onset, one has trouble wondering how much irony, how much kitsch, and how much truth is present in Kane's songwriting. The fact is, all three have about equal validity, and that's what makes his music so much stronger.

"We emerge, gasping; having been consoled by our ownership of whatever it is that might be termed religion," he says at one point before admitting, "my lungs may never work as well as they did before my immersion." Perhaps not, but surely the power of his music has drawn some stake of positively from all the human turmoil rampant across the span of his life.

"I'm on the side of the f**king angels" Kane assures us. And his music, aside from the occasional lyrics that would make most pimps and prostitutes blush, bulges of seraphic choirs, lush horns, a tight rhythm section, and a seeming cast of thousands (nearly twenty people are named in the linear notes) that provide Kane with the musical credibility to make his intriguing brand of melody palpable even on an oddly pop scale. "Who'll be the train that leads me away from you / and who'll be the train to bring me back," he nearly whispers on the album's tender second track "Oh Mercy," although on the very next clip he asks his lover, "when you were sick on your shoes, was it the fags or the blues, or the joint you rolled in the taxi." This is the kind of juxtaposition we are to expect from Kane-part perfect seventies soul, and part banned poetry. Oddly enough, the end result is luscious, reassuring, and thoroughly original. What else can you expect from the man with a "noxious skin condition" whose life has been full of addiction, loss, and betrayal, and who's music has been compared to that of Al Green, David Bowie, Jarvis Cocker, Iggy Pop, Nick Cave, and Jeff Buckley.

"Tomorrow we might be slightly older," he sings on "The Morning After
the Morning After." Luckily, on this, Kane's tenth album, he's certainly
showing no signs of slowing down.

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