2016 sees Santa Barbara’s Glen Phillips thinking heavily about change, loss, and grief. When he plays at SOhO Restaurant & Music Club (1221 State St.) on Tuesday, April 26, he will play songs from his upcoming October album, Swallowed by the New, which meditates on these themes. I talked with him on the phone about a recent separation, his relationship to his earlier music, and making the best of painful transitions.
How are you? I’m undoing a Chinese package of jujubes … It’s like a cross between a date and a plum. My girlfriend likes exotic fruit.
One of my favorite questions: Do you have a spirit fruit or spirit vegetable? You know, I don’t know if I do. [Asks girlfriend.] Prune. She says I’m a prune.