Judee Sill

Have you guys heard Judee Sill at all? Dr. Kittybrains, if you haven't, run, don't walk. She's under-appreciated in the U.S., in part because her (only) two albums were never reliably in print on CD. I'd compare her a bit to Joni Mitchell or Laura Nyro (she's from the same time/scene), but she's less abstract and jazzy than Joni-- more in the baroque country/folk pop vein, and she's less soulful than Nyro-- she has a kind of pleasantly pure, flat drawl and her vocals are multi-tracked and drenched in warm echo. Apparently her life was all kinds of tragic (drug overdoses, prostitution to support the habit, early death, etc). I have a compilation that combines her two albums and it's just gorgeous music. The instrumentation is usually very spare-- acoustic guitar or piano, occasional pedal steel or tasteful strings, light percussion-- but she overdubs really beautiful layers of vocal harmonies. The overall feel is just intense sadness. I don't know if I'm selling this very well, so just trust me that it's absolutely beautiful songwriting and performing and well worth seeking out. Even though she's a girl.

I'll embed some good youtube examples (which, as usual, feature cheesy montage of still images). Unfortunately I couldn't find one of the best examples of her sound, "Archetypal Man," which is primarily a melancholy country ballad with pedal steel but then has this insane break with baroque contrapuntal wordless vocal overdubs. It's awesome. Maybe I'll upload it later.

Jesus Was a Cross Maker (one of her best, more upbeat, covered by The Hollies)


The Kiss (just gorgeous)