Sam Phillips, Attuned to The Key of Imagination

For the benefit of an NPR webcast audience on Monday night, singer-songwriter Sam Phillips turned the Rams Head Tavern into a make-believe ballroom, complete with ice skaters and a "girl hanging from the ceiling in a swing." Phillips's word portrait of the Annapolis club and the crowd on hand -- "ladies in long dresses with corsages" -- was a running conceit throughout her performance, adding an amusing touch to a concert filled with soulful musings, dreamy love songs and dispatches from "the edge of the world."

Phillips, who began her career in Christian pop and later married producer-tunesmith T Bone Burnett, is still drawn to themes of faith and hope. Her songwriting, however, has become more distinctive, literate and evocative. One of the evening's highlights was "Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us," an original song that appears on Phillips's new album "Don't Do Anything" and was recently recorded by Alison Krauss and Robert Plant. The song concerns a broken heart, but the lyric also reflects Phillips's deep spirituality and musical affinities. Mixing old songs with new album cuts, Phillips sometimes used a sardonic refrain -- "help is coming, one day late" -- or a surge of percussion and dissonance, as on "Shake It Down," to make similar connections.

Phillips is no longer married to Burnett, but his influence on her music remains unmistakable. Playing acoustic and electric guitars, she was backed by a trio that used violin, keyboards, guitars and mallets to create a resonating weave of sounds that evoked everything from Weimar-era cabaret and Asian fan dances to feverish torch and twang.

-- Mike Joyce