Nathan Phillips exercises randomness, control in making of new album

When writing the songs for new Big Bend album Last Circle in a Slowdown, out via Shimmy-Disc on Friday, Sept. 13, Nathan Phillips said he initially gravitated toward the sounds of certain words or phrases, working in an initial burst where his language existed somewhat outside of meaning.

“With this album especially, I was using that method of making sounds to create melodies,” Phillips said in early September from his home in Mansfield, Ohio, allowing that he leaned into certain words or phrases owing to the sharpness of the consonants or the way certain vowels served to elongate notes. “And I still vacillate between thinking there’s a cause or a reason that these words wanted to get out and believing it’s all just randomness. I don’t know if it was something I was trying to work through or just kind of like, ‘Hey, these words sound nice.’”

At times, Phillips’ vocals serve almost as another instrument in the mix, particularly on the album opening “Wheeling,” a layered, percussive turn on which his fragile, drop-it-and-it-might-shatter voice offers a ghostly, ethereal counterpoint to the machinelike click of drums. Then there’s “Same Hour,” where Phillips sings about viewing miles of rail as the music adopts a motorik chug that echoes a passing train.

Throughout, the music maintains a gorgeous sense of tension. The songs are at once spacious and deeply layered. (Phillips worked with a dozen musicians, including hammered dulcimer player and Columbus expat Jen Powers of the great Powers/Rolin Duo). And the album maintains a live-in-a-room vibe even though it couldn’t have been created without the assistance of computer recording software. “I wanted to give it that feeling, like, yeah, these people are in a room playing,” Phillips said, “but there’s something a little bit off about it.”

Despite Phillips’ concerns rooted in his more impressionistic approach to lyric writing, certain themes do take root, with the musician tracing repeated references to light and dark to a lingering sense of disconnect he has felt in his spiritual life in recent years. “There’s a lot about wanting to believe in something on this, I think. And I definitely recognize that desire in myself, even if I haven’t landed on anything,” he said. “So, light and dark, when framed in that way, maybe there’s a tendency to want to feel unburdened. Or to want to feel a kinship with the universe and the world and whatever that thing is.”

Other songs are rooted in more earthly observations, including “Wheeling,” whose mentions of natural surroundings (vines, leaves, cattle and birds) stem from a yearning for the outdoors that the musician felt early in the pandemic. “I wasn’t in Ohio at the time, and I was living in a stereotypical, mouse-ridden New York apartment,” said Phillips, who credited the sonic influence of his home state on certain sounds present in the record, even creating an accompanying 30 song playlist rich in Columbus musicians (Brian Harnetty, Scrawl, Giant Claw and J. Rawls included). “And I remember feeling that urge, like, you’ve gotta get outside – even if it’s just out on the sidewalks.”

Those early Covid days also impacted the recording in more subtle ways, including the stillness that creeps into tracks such as the patient, buzzing “Cistern.” “It was such an isolated, lonely time. And I think at that point it felt like I had all the time that I might need for the music to settle into whatever it was going to be,” Phillips said. “And, yeah, maybe some of that stillness did transfer into it. … The album definitely doesn’t feel sparse, but hopefully there is a more open element to it, or something that feels held back in the right ways, like I’m not overplaying things.”

Despite some of the larger ideas drawn out in the more stream-of-consciousness writing process, Phillips isn’t sure if the recording brought him any closer to resolution. It did, however, serve as yet another reminder of the magic present in the act of creation.

“I don’t actually know if it’s helping me get to the root of anything,” he said. “But it does feel like this need that I have. And it feels meaningful. There’s something about that process that helps me a lot, where you’re making something that wasn’t previously there. … I mean, maybe this is a little corny, but I remember being a kid and having this experience with albums where it blew my mind that these things could even exist. And I connected with that super hard and thought the coolest thing ever would be to make albums. And that idea has really lived on for me.”