Grant-Lee Phillips

Grant-Lee Phillips has spent his career crafting literate, elegant songs based on the darker corners of American history. Born in 1963, he cut his teeth in the noisy, experimental Los Angeles group Shiva Burlesque and then moved on to front the stormy Americana trio Grant Lee Buffalo. The latter found great success in the ’90s, including opening dates for R.E.M., thanks to the delicate 1993 single “Fuzzy” and 1994’s dusky Mighty Joe Moon. After Grant Lee Buffalo split in 1999, Phillips embarked on a solo career, initially leaning into ornate, theatrical music (on 2001’s drum-machine-aided Mobilize) and more acoustic, folk-based fare (2004’s Virginia Creeper). He gained an unexpected career boost by portraying the guitar-toting troubadour on the TV show Gilmore Girls and later cowrote songs with comedian Margaret Cho. However, Phillips’ solo work remains uniformly thoughtful and well-considered, including and especially 2022’s All That You Can Dream.