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Review: 'KING, PHIL'
'The Wreckage'   

-  Label: 'Self Released'
-  Genre: 'Folk' -  Release Date: '16th April 2016'

Our Rating:
The nine songs on this Bristol-based singer's third album are built around first person narratives examining the causes of the 'wreckage' of his life and his thoughts on how to go about putting these ruins into some semblance of order.

"Give me strength, give me grace, just enough to see me through", he sings wistfully on the gorgeous opening acoustic ballad called Sicily.

Such thoughts are expressed as a kind of mash up of prayers and affirmations, carrying strong elements of wish fulfillment.

Poison Blue is almost hymnal in tone while in Faith To Lose and I Wonder If I Will, he confesses to self destructive tendencies and admits that it's hard to break bad habits. The title of another song, I Wonder If I Will Ever Learn, speaks for itself.

On the title track this soul searching leads to him to fatalistically reflect upon "All this longing that I will never fulfill".

The silver lining is that he knows how to turn this cloud-obsessed raw material into crisp tunes and can switch smoothly between introspective ballads and breezy pop.

In pop mode you find him gamely "rolling with the punches" for Stronger and You Know Where To Find Me is a good example of him as a forlorn balladeer straddling a rock and hard place between "din and damnation".

Recorded live in The Wood Room at Real World, the album scores high on spontaneity and you warm to Phil King's honesty in laying bear his faults so candidly and melodically.

Phil King's website
  author: Martin Raybould

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KING, PHIL - The Wreckage