Shawn Phillips
Album: Spaced
Label: Talking Elephant
Tracks: 9
Website: http://www.shawnphillips.com

Spaced is the 1977 album that A&M brought out three years after the landmark Furthermore. Much of the album mopped up recordings from Shawn's earlier album sessions which had generally failed to make the cut for those albums due to time constraints (like the opening sequence comprising Rant, Italian Phases and The Light From Between Your Eyes, mostly recorded in 1973, or the three Rumplestiltskin's Resolve outtakes - Stranded, Prelude To A Leaving and the relaxed, cautiously funky 16-minute instrumental workout I Don't Want To Leave You, I Just Came To Say Goodbye - all from 1975).

Of the remainder of the tracks, the bossa-nova-rhythmed Parisian Plight 1 dates from 1969 composition-wise, having been extracted from Shawn's original Trilogy presented to A&M that year, while of the pair of tracks recorded in 1977, the brief All Our Love harks back to Shawn's role as compassionate contemporary troubadour while From All Of Us employs a more orthodox rock backing that slightly dilutes the impact of Shawn's prescient, environmentally conscious lyrics.

On this description, Spaced may seem rather a patchwork, but its overall impression is altogether more unified when listened to in one sitting. And this newly remastered reissue usefully plugs another gap in the canon of Shawn's albums now available on CD.

David Kidman