SEXTHIRSTY LOVEHUNGER

ONE of MUSIC’S BEST-KEPT SECRETS EMERGES ANEW

Cory Phillips definitely has something to prove.  The Lawrence, Kansas-based singer/songwriter and his group, the Band of Light, are currently packaging his second studio album, SEXTHIRSTYLOVEHUNGER, due for release in May 2021 (pre-sale available in April).  The entire collection is brimming with summer party gold.  It’s been over 10 fast years since he released anything larger than a single, and this long-awaited follow up to Phillips’ self-titled 2009 debut is meant to make up for lost time.

When asked why it’s been so long, Phillips laughs it off, “No one was ready for this yet.  I think people now are dying to groove and be sexual again.”

Phillips and his bands have played coast to coast for a decade, amassing fans drawn to his erotic singing and bedroom funk.  Yet only the time that Covid-sequestering afforded him allowed for the definitive recording of his decade’s better work. 

The new album is an effort in innovation.  In the midst of the health crisis, new freedoms and limitations developed for the musician with a secret life pursuing his PhD in climatology at the University of Kansas.  Gigs cancelled, tours off, Phillips converted part of his house into a recording studio and brought in his Lawrence/Kansas City-based ‘Band of Light’ along with wizard engineer Robert Rebeck (Tech N9ne) to complete the 14-song hitlist of retro-tinged solid gold. 

Each song on the quasi-concept album is a testament to love and sex based on hard-lived experiences in Phillips’ own life:  loves gained and lost, the joys and costs of being a habitual pleasure-seeker, longing and courtship, even carnal moments in real time.  The content always exudes refined wisdom and sensitivity but dips into the dark waters of illicit love equally.  The dirty bouquet of groove, funk, soul, and classic pop Phillips & the Band of Light developed is a horny blend of vintage spice.  On this album the mature music man has learned how to communicate more information in his poems, and this book of songs is a tantalizing read at the turntable.

The album's first single, "Fit You", is a foray into their musical boudoir (dudeoir?).  Evoking Sade and Michael Jackson, Phillips pits Feminism against Machismo as he tries to make sense of a friend/lover.  Ultimately we discover which role wins, instinctively, as the song concludes with commanding sexuality.  You can suspect "Fit You" will be on playlists party-to-party in 2021 as vaccinated hedonists start to socialize again.

Guitarist Michael Hamm (Play Dead, the Band That Saved the World), keyboardist Nate Holt (Asterales, Approach), bassist Mario Vlasic, and long-time colleague and drummer Chel Rich (Half Tiger Half Bear, Red On Yellow, Stone Cutters Union) are the Band of Light, capable of reaching every sensual dynamic in the catalog with masterful precision and bite. The group spans from southern rock to classic soul and disco to jazz in the same movement, mirroring Phillips’ fire dance with their own seasoned acrobatics.  Their seductive live shows are consistently epic funk and disco parties, the excitement and prowl of which were miraculously captured on this new studio album.  With SEXTHIRSTYLOVEHUNGER, Cory Phillips & the Band of Light take us to their party, get us naked, and remind us that there is something perfectly spiritual in our appetite for hedonism.

Album due May 21st, pre-sale on iTunes/Amazon Music in late April, and catch the band live as soon as the pandemic subsides.