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5 Albums I Can't Live Without

5 Albums I Can’t Live Without: Glen Phillips of Toad the Wet Sprocket

(Credit: Scott Dudelson/Getty Images)

Name  Glen Phillips

Best known for  I’m the singer for Toad the Wet Sprocket. You said be serious or funny. That’s both, right?

Current city  Santa Barbara, CA

Really want to be in Santa Barbara (it’s my hometown) but able to afford it.

Excited about  Releasing my new solo record, There Is So Much Here (November 4). Also listening to Abe Partridge’s excellent podcast Alabama Astronaut, about the music of Pentecostal snake handlers.

My current music collection has a lot of  My music collection has a lot of media formats I no longer have a way of playing. It’s all over the map, but there’s a lot of singer/songwriters in there.

And a little bit of  Kwaali.

Preferred format  I kind of hate streaming for reasons of sound quality and artist compensation, but that’s what I currently listen to, just because of the convenience. Not sure whether that means I have a weak backbone or if it’s just a sign of the times.

 

 

5 Albums I Can’t Live Without:

 

1
Lamp Lit Prose, Dirty Projectors

 

 

This is the work of a genius who is incapable of making accessible pop music trying to make a record of accessible pop music, or at least that’s how I see it. The lyrics, arrangements and songs are brilliant, and nothing happens the way you would expect it to happen. I keep finding new details and falling deeper in love with it.

2
Evening Machines, Gregory Alan Isakov

 

 

Lush, cinematic, soaring and yet still intimate and understated. A masterpiece of writing and arrangement.

3
Emmaar, Tinariwen

 

 

Honestly, I’d take almost any of their albums. Deep grooves, beautiful rough voices, smoking guitars and the relief of the lyrics being in Tuareg so I’m never distracted by words.

4
Revolver, The Beatles

 

 

Beatles over Stones for me. Not much more to say.

5
Malibu, Anderson .Paak

 

 

Great at every level. Intense musicality, great songwriting and deadly grooves.

Choices will change tomorrow. So it goes…