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| New York Times Stephen Holden April 22, 2008 A Songwriter Being Honest With Himself The music of Phil Roy, a sadly under-recognized songwriter who toiled in Los Angeles for two decades before deciding to record and perform his own work, accomplishes a delicate emotional surgery that countless troubadours have tried but few have been able to carry off. In the most direct language and without irony, the frizzy-haired, bearded composer, who today lives outside of Philadelphia, describes personal experiences of love, loss and spiritual revelation with a naked honesty untainted by narcissism. Take ''Hope in a Hopeless World,'' the opening number in Mr. Roy's show at Joe's Pub on Saturday evening. In the song (written with Bob Thiele), which rides a light Latin-flavored beat, the singer describes himself as ''looking for hope in a hopeless world/Searching for love in such hateful times'' but goes on to affirm a powerful, if blind, faith in humanity. What keeps the song from sounding glibly inspirational is its stinging use of the word ''hateful,'' which Mr. Roy sings in a pained, throbbing voice. The narrator of ''Undeniably Human'' confesses his own insecurity and jealousy to a lover and abjectly pleads for understanding: ''Love me, that's what I need/That makes me undeniably human.'' In ''Melt,'' which he wrote with the actor Nicolas Cage, he fantasizes about taking a bullet and killing a shark to prove his love. These songs, whose melodies (like Mr. Roy's singing) echo the best work of Jesse Colin Young, with additional traces of Leonard Cohen and Van Morrison, come from his second album, ''Issues and Options'' (Or Music), one of the year's two or three most satisfying albums by an American singer-songwriter. In one way or another, the songs are touching object lessons in confronting and transcending despair. |
