So as I’ve mentioned a few times, I don’t really watch
reality TV. Part of it is a factor of me not owning a TV and getting anything
I’d want to watch online, but partially because most of the reality singing
competitions just don’t really interest me. I mean, American Idol might have been a big deal about a decade ago, but
you can’t say it is in the same way now.
Or can you? The late-period American Idol winners haven’t been all that bad upon closer
examination. After all, I liked more of Scotty McCreery’s sophomore album than
I was expecting, even so far as naming ‘Feel Good Summer Song’ as one of my
favourite tracks of 2013. But of the late-period winners from that show, the
one that really struck my attention was Phillip Phillips, a folk singer-songwriter
who stepped up to the plate with a lot more character and personality than you
normally see in reality show winners. And his debut album was surprisingly
strong in that regard, bucking the trend of Idol winners delivering flavourless
garbage on their debut record in order to maintain as much of their Idol
audience as possible.
Now that’s not saying that album was flawless. Plenty of
critics made the Dave Matthews Band comparison, and that’s not without merit,
especially considering the frontman with solid acoustic guitar skills and a
grittier voice singing about artfully crafted, if broadly sketched subject
matter. For me, his production was a little cleaner than I’d normally like to
see in folk rock, and there were definitely moments of clumsiness in his songwriting
that stood out. But then again, the guy was also younger than me, the album was
rushed together in two months, and it was his debut record, so I was willing to
be forgiving here. And coming into his sophomore album Behind The Light, I wondered if Phillips might stand out a little
better now that the brief folk rock revival of late 2012 had petered out. So I
gave the album a couple listens – how did it go?
