Monday, November 10, 2008

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)

10 comments:

Quinapalus said...

Eric I think you actually sent us all a Judee Sill MP3 last year sometime--maybe during our end of the year top ten fest--because I ran accross Jesus Was a Cross Maker recently on my computer and put it on my iPod. I like it! Although I do have theological questions about it...specifically that the Bible just says that Jesus was a carpenter, and the only other place I've ever heard him described as a "cross maker" was in The Last Temptation of Christ. I thought for the purposes of that book/movie (and FYI, Last Temptation is a great book as well, by Nikos Kazantzakis, who also wrote Zorba the Greek) that the idea of making him a cross maker was an interesting and ironic twist on "carpenter". But Judee says with such conviction that he's a cross maker...I wonder if she lifted the idea from Last Tempation, or if there is some obscure tradition about it beyond that, or if it's just her own weird assertion. Any ideas? I did a quick google search on it to no avail...

Eric said...

I'm a member of what Chuck D would call the "so-called chosen frozen" so I know not of what you speak.

dr. kittybrains said...

I'm newly obsessed with her. Well done, Eric. I fucking LOVE this. Here's a link to her first album:

http://rapidshare.com/files/37155674/Judee_Sill.rar

dr. kittybrains said...

And here's the second album:

http://sharebee.com/c679981c

It's really exceptional, too. Eric... GREAT. CALL.

Eric said...

Ha! I win!!

Via Chicago said...

Yeah this is great stuff, no doubt. I tend to lean a bit less mopey in my music, so the first song appeals to me more, but both are really fantastic.

Interestingly, listening to this makes me think that THIS is more of what She & Him are going for, rather than the Linda Ronstadt cound that is always attributed to them. But you can't tell me that Jesus was a Cross Maker is not the exact song She & Him strive to record.

Via Chicago said...

After posting I decided to poke around the internet and read up on Ms. Sill and found this great site focusing on her unreleased recordings:

http://www.webnoir.com/bob/music/

But more important.ly, check out THIS from that site:

"Thanks also to BRIAN GARI for his previous assistance"

I thought Dr. Kittybrains would certainly appreciate that.

dr. kittybrains said...

Brian Gari! Alert Corey Finkle.

texplush said...

God, I WISH that this was what She and Him were going for....

sgcim said...

Yeah, she got the crossmaker thing from "Last Temptation..."
She was heavy into mystical Christianity and the occult.
As her producer/recording engineer (as well as Joni's)Henry Lewy said about her, summing up her life and work- "What a talent..."