FIELD DAY

I have probably half of Phillips' albums from the earlier days, up through the "New England" album that came out in 1992, and I too am one of those people who love the diversity, songwriting skills and level of technical ability that this man displays across most of those albums. Personally, he sort of started to lose me a bit with the more cinematic-sounding albums ("Tarka", "Slow Dance", even the later "Dragonfly Dreams"). Not bad albums, but not what I was primarily coming to Ant Phillips for...

But when he came back in 2005 with "Field Day", I took a dive in the deep end again. He even notes in the liner notes that "this is a lot" - yeah, over 60 songs of a shorter nature, all acoustic, using numerous guitars from his collection. It IS a lot. But it's not too much.

Listening to this album again today, I was surprised at HOW GOOD most of these songs are. He somehow keeps us from being bored by a similar phrase or guitar sound with endless originality here. Really nice, and really surprising given the number of pieces here. If this is to be considered "prog", it would have to be under the most pastoral and simplest of definitions. But the more important point is that it is great music.

Before I played this today, I noticed that I rated this 4-1/2 stars on my RYM page many years ago - the only AP album I have rated that high since his 1979 "Sides". I raised an eyebrow; could this really be that good with so many songs, and short ones at that, and all acoustic?...

Uh, yup.