Downcast Phillips delivers uplifting show

Sam Phillips performed at the Somerville Theatre on Sept. 13. She sang solo and with a three-piece band. (Globe Photo/Aram Boghosian)

SOMERVILLE - The night began with a stealthy rumble, and a song about escape and yearning. "I need love, not some sentimental prison," singer-songwriter Sam Phillips sang with unhurried deliberation, her phrasing as measured and direct as her steely gaze. "I need fire to melt the frozen sea inside me."

That opening song - make that salvo - in Phillips's hourlong set at the Somerville Theatre Saturday night was "I Need Love," from Phillips's 1994 breakthrough album, "Martinis & Bikinis." Fourteen years later, delivering its message of spiritual upheaval and carnal longing, from behind a big electric guitar and that baleful voice of hers, Phillips made the song new again. And in some crucial ways, it was.

In fact, it was difficult not to read between the lines of that composition, and especially the material that comprises her latest album, "Don't Do Anything," given the well-publicized breakup of her marriage to producer-musician T-Bone Burnett. "I've been putting this off, but I'm gonna sing you a sad song now," a pensive Phillips said by way of introducing "No Explanations," a new number that invited speculation with verses such as, "I thought if he understood, he wouldn't treat me this way."

Despite her alleged procrastination, the tune - accented by guitarist Eric Gorfain's pretty, poisonous flourishes and drummer Jay Bellerose's method of hammering the point home with timpani mallets - came a mere four songs into the set. But you couldn't help but wonder whether its presumed autobiography hit a little too close to home, cut a little too close to the bone. Or maybe it was the half-empty theater that had proven disheartening.

Whatever the reason, the singer's downcast mood fit the spirit of her material. To that end, Phillips and her three-piece backing band - which also included accordionist Ted Reichman, adding a wonderfully wheezing Marlene Dietrich/Edith Piaf-esque cabaret ambiance to "Edge of the World" - were splendidly focused, and strikingly inventive. "The Fan Dance," this time with Gorfain accompanying on a horn-adorned Stroh violin, sounded like an ancient Chinese love sonnet. Elsewhere, Phillips dispensed with her electric guitar to bash a big shovel on the clanging hoodoo noir of "Shake It Down." An ode to a full moon, she called it.

Earlier, Phillips had stood alone onstage and sang the strangely lonesome "Animals on Wheels" over nothing but the tinny instrumentation supplied by a hand-held cassette recorder. At specific intervals, Phillips would shake the recorder like a Cracker Jack box with a prize inside, and the tape would distort and stretch woozily, as if to underscore a lyric. Phillips's gesticulations made for a pointed exertion of timing and control amid a universe that, as so many of her songs attested, frequently spirals out of it.