Zero Zero Zero: The Best of Sam Phillips

AMG Review of Zero Zero Zero: The Best of Sam Phillips

William Ruhlmann
All Music Guide

Never having scored any hits, but probably contractually required to assemble a compilation at the end of her contract with Virgin Records (which would seem to have been at hand), Sam Phillips came up with an idiosyncratic repackaging consisting mostly of songs from her four albums for the label. (The advisedly titled lead-off track, "Disappearing Act," was new.) Four songs were remixed, and one, "Holding on to the Earth," was presented in a new version. The sequencing, which went back and forth from the more conventional pop sound of The Indescribable Wow and Cruel Inventions to the more experimental Martinis & Bikinis and Omnipop (It's Only a Flesh Wound Lambchop), emphasized the differences between the records, with, for example, the edgy "Signposts" from Martinis & Bikinis followed by the art-pop (complete with string section) of "That's Where the Colors Don't Go" from Cruel Inventions. Phillips often seemed to be revising her early, more accessible work in the light of her later, more challenging efforts, such as including only the 75-second Marc Ribot-played guitar part from the Cruel Inventions track "Tripping over Gravity." Though some of Phillips' better songs were included, this was less a "best of" than a re-imagining of her Virgin Records catalog.