Grant Lee Phillips's "Mobilize" — Where Doth ILM Come Down?

This was the soundtrack of September 11th for me, having purchased it during the days right before. At the time, Phillips's versatile tenor and the texture of the production were a source of comfort in 9/11's aftermath; with lyrical references to NYC and allusions to American decadence ("We're tumbling in our chariot"), the subtext running throughout the album mixing military and emotional metaphors offered something of a parallel commentary to the confusion and incessant images of smoldering buildings that hung over the country for several weeks.

With a bit of distance, I can hear Mobilize more clearly: as a first-rate example of a singer-songwriter circumventing the No Depression/guitar-bass-drums grindstone — in this case by inviting a sympathetic knob-twiddler into the studio with him. But from expansive 2am cab rides to Union Square listening to "Space Oddity" ("See America") and the agitated, conflicted title track to more simple pleasures of electro-pop catharsis ("Spring Released") and heartbroken tunefulness ("Humankind") the results are almost uniformly striking (almost).

Outside of a jaunty collaboration on Jon Brion's Meaningless and a live show in Virgina, I am familiar with little of his other work (and given how different what little of it I do know sounds like from this album, I've never been particularly inclined to dig further). But over five years later, especially as "Proper Songwriters" have begun to recede into the background, Mobilize quietly strikes me as one of the more unsung records of the decade.

Is it?