After 2011's excellent People and Places which placed in my top 10 that year, Phil Angotti returns with another album of superbly crafted McCartney-esque pop. Like People and Places, Life in Rhymes (as its title hints) finds Angotti drawing from personal experience for many of these tracks, adding a layer of warmth to the sweet melodies underneath. In many respects he's similar to David Grahame, both in terms of his vocals and the McCartney influence.
"Hopeful Kids" starts off the album in buoyant fashion with a sprightly melody and its piano bridge as he looks wistfully back on his school days and what the future would hold, and the vaugely jazzy, soul-inflected "Unusual Me" follows, sounding as if just climbed the charts in 1974. The pensive "Difficult World" channels solo Macca, and the title track finds Angotti looking back on his songwriting career in melodic fashion. Elsewhere, "In Liverpool" finds him in the "holy land", and "Too Late Tomorrow" has a "Hey Jude"-like feel with its extended chorus outro and a fine guitar solo from Angotti.
The later portion of the disc adds a few more highlights - the jangly "Nancy" has an "I've Just Seen a Face"-like simplicity, and "Daddy's Country Records" tells the story of how his father weaned him on classic country artists like Buck Owens and Johnny Cash and tells him to "knock off that 60s pop/and learn to be country", advice he takes for this track. This is another winner from Angotti, and a return to the top 10 this year isn't out of the question.
CD Baby | iTunes
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