Daily Hampshire Gazette
Nov. 27th, 2003 One Philip Price is Right

BY KEN MAIURI 11/27/03 -- I love pop music, and there's plenty of it growing here in your own backyard. One of the Valley songwriters with a well-kept song garden this season is Philip Price, who recently released two CDs, ''13 Songs for Right Now,'' and ''Honey In the Chemicals (A Screenplay).'' Both records fit in with this time of year, with beauty and melancholy swirling together toward an unavoidable winter.I've been a fan of Price's songwriting since seeing his old band The Maggies blast through a set at the Northampton Brewery in 1995. But the melody-powered Maggies were nearly as cursed as the Red Sox and went through many personnel changes in its decade of existence (I played in one of the shorter-lived line-ups). The Maggies bought the farm in early 2002, but Price moved on to greener pastures - he got signed to a New York indie label called ''Listen Here! Records'' which offered the Northampton-based artist some support, a bigger chance to get his new music heard by ears around the globe, and put its modest weight behind the two new records.

It's Price's first time ever releasing his songs not under a band name, but simply his own. Yet while he's finally coming out from behind all the monikers, the booklet photo of him, looking directly at the camera, is coupled with the caption: ''Hide me.'' Price is one of many artists who recently put out two new records as companion pieces (Ryan Adams, Frank Black, Paul Westerberg, and Tom Waits are some examples) and it makes sense for Price to divide the songs into separate releases. ''13 Songs for Right Now,'' released first, has aspects of a ''clear the decks'' project; the interestingly titled disc features a handful of songs actually from ''back then,'' tunes that first got their driver's licenses under the watch of his old projects The Maggies (''Taking the Wheel,'' ''Cold Nickels,'' ''Sort of True,'' ''Polynesian Dream''), the Gay Potatoes (''Another Right Time''), and Feet Wet (''A Tall Man'').

But though Price already has a seemingly endless back catalog of perfect pop songs, he also has a knack for discovering more and more new treasures in the air that floats around us all: the album's opening song ''Found Weekend'' is a room-hushingly beautiful song, one of his best. With the baggage of a band gone, Price is free to weave a spell as personal as possible. There's still plenty of varied instrumentation - lilting acoustic guitars, mellotron-like flutes, percussion, low-end keyboards, electric leads, a drum machine - but they're all played by Price, who wrote, recorded, and mixed the albums at home by himself. He doesn't need to depend on anyone else, and these albums glow with the inspiration of that discovery; the haunting ending to ''Found Weekend,'' with Price repeating the mantra ''You will live forever'' over a ghostly seasick waltz, is just one example.

Price is a preacher of the Gospel of John and Paul, and while some of that comes through in his occasional late-'60s Fab Four-ish arrangement choices (a little see-saw mellotron flute here, a little downward half-step harmonic movement there), the life lessons he learned from the Beatles are deeper and stronger than surface decoration. Like that most high of pop bands, Price understands the importance of the hook. He writes pop songs with heart, skill, hummability and lasting power. And he writes a LOT of them. ''13 Songs'' has its share of catchy tunes, like the delicate, hypnotic bounce of ''On and On,'' and the engaging ''Please Don't Change,'' which has the funny and cute lyrical detail ''You think 'Star Wars' is better than 'Star Trek''' to drive home the more serious chorus, ''I'm tired of people bending people / into people they can bend / so please don't change for me.''

Though ''13 Songs'' made its way out of the gate first in the release-date race, ''Honey In the Chemicals (A Screenplay)'' has the nominal lead in my book; it's Price's most cohesive, gorgeous record so far. The subtitle hints that there's a story here. The two almost subliminal printed messages tucked away in the booklet's pages - ''I miss you'' and ''hide me'' - are simple enough to be part of the primal vocabulary of a young child, but Price isn't afraid to show how the needs expressed by those words - ''come back,'' ''take care of me'' - will apply to your life no matter how mature you think you are. The songs tread and often bleed on the spiky territory of lovers, their offspring, aftermaths and repercussions. What makes the record so great is that the tunes are uniformly strong and stand within the framework of the record without depending on it. And they don't sacrifice the simple pleasure of melody while moving through emotional minefields. ''You Don't Live Long Enough'' has a vibe in common with the best Elliott Smith songs, which makes it even more melancholy and affecting given that singer's recent suicide. ''Man Down'' filters a Lennon-like melody through Neil Young weariness. ''Heart'' is a nerve-fried emo-skiffle tune, somehow sounding both chipper and ominous.

Price is a pro at marrying the happy and the hard-to-take - for example, you'll find yourself pleasantly humming along to a song from the other room, and when you walk back to the stereo to look at what that catchy repetitious lyric you're ''la-la''-ing actually is, you find out it's ''you're dead now.'' You wonder how a song so jaunty and galloping can be about family and friends standing over a dying man. ''They wanna believe that you've made peace with your life,'' he sings, ''but all you think about's the love of your life / and it isn't your wife.'' Price's Web site says he's already formed a new group of sorts, Winterpills, which consists of Dennis Crommett and Dave Hower of Spanish for Hitchhiking, who will back up Price in some live situations with atmospheric guitar, harmony and percussion. Price collaborated with Crommett at his record release show last year and the results were heavenly, so the Winterpills lineup is full of promise.

But the strongest I've ever seen Price perform was alone, in the now-defunct Listening Room in Northampton. He filled the full but pin-drop-still room with just a shimmering acoustic guitar and his heartbroken but clearheaded voice, which had never sounded better. ''13 Songs'' and ''Honey In the Chemicals'' aren't as stark as that performance, but they're the most unfiltered Price music yet, intimate yet expansive, singular yet timeless.