Phillips Provides Intimate Evening, Even With a Cold

On her recent and overlooked album “The Indescribable Wow,” Sam Phillips sings bright, richly textured, vaguely Baroque pop songs that wouldn’t sound out of place on the radio between, say, the Beatles and Belinda Carlisle.

At McCabe’s on Saturday night, though, she stripped her material of its studio sheen and layered arrangements and made the songs more evocative than ever; she hasn’t toured in two years, but the show made it clear that this singular songwriter is also a gifted performer.

By turns shy, coquettish and charming on stage, Phillips--who appeared on the bill with Tonio K., reviewed last March in these pages--sings love songs wracked by doubts, the work of someone searching for lasting romantic and spiritual grace but fully aware of what an elusive goal that is. Accompanied only by a guitarist, she cast the uncertainties and fears of her music in sharp focus by singing in a voice so soft and hesitant it forced the crowd to catch every nuance.

The result was an extraordinary intimacy made all the more remarkable by how effortless it seemed. The only disappointment was that a bad cold held her set to eight songs and less than half an hour.