Judee Sill: The Lost Pearl
A couple of months ago, I wrote a review of Judee Sill's music for a university's student magazine which unfortunately never got published. Nonetheless, the review carries my sheer joy of having discovered this precious yet unfairly forgotten voice almost 35 years after the singer died of an allegedly accidental overdose. More often than not, when speaking of great singer-songwriters that emerged in the late 60s/early 70s, names like Joni Mitchell, Nick Drake and Carole King will pop up but people will give you the most innocent face when Judee Sill's name is mentioned. I discovered Judee Sill along with American psychedelic-folk songstress Linda Perhacs and British folk cult-icon Vashti Bunyan, both of whom, unlike Sill, are still alive and making wonderful music. Yet, in my own opinion, despite their sonic idiosyncrasies, Perhacs and Bunyan are no comparison to Sill when it comes to song crafting.
In fact, over the past year or so, I have become a loyal 'envoy' of hers, introducing her music to a lot of people I have come across. When the crystal piano intro of the 'The Kiss' with the patina of age kicks off from friends' stereos or phones, I can't help but to feel like I have built up a very special personal relationship with, if not Judee Sill the person, her music. What's more, after following her music for quite a while, I accidentally found this album pressed on vinyl while browsing through a thick stack of secondhand records at a flee market. I remember mysteriously hearing a calling from this album and starting humming the tunes of tracks on it, only just seconds before this cover, featuring Sill in a denim jacket looking pensive, emerged right in front of eyes. Looking surprised, the seller asked me 'How did you hear about her? I have not met anyone, especially a person as young as you, who even knows her! This is a gem and I wasn't sure to sell or keep it.'
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Sill's tragic life is in stark contrast to her often jubilant musical arrangements. Her second album Heart Food, originally released in 1973, kicks off with a country-flavored 'There's a Rugged Road', on which she sings about a 'blindly faithful' Sisyphus figure schlepping to his kingdom of truth and happiness. Whether or not there is any linkage between the pilgrimage under Sill's pen and Albert Camus' absurdism is entirely up to the listeners to decide but one simply can not skip the uncanny resemblance. Different from the simplistic folksy approach on her self-titled debut album, originally released in 1971, Heart Food offers the listeners a more eclectic set of tracks such as 'Soldier of the Heart' which has received an exhilarating Rock'n'roll treatment while hiding her writhing underneath its glamorous surface. Sill's classic use of mystic metaphors has once again created this fearless spirit who comes to take her flying to the astral realm when 'the battlefield's so cold'. What might appear to be jovial is in fact a sharply satirical reflection of her struggles with loneliness, lack of artistic acknowledgement, prostitution and her reliance on narcotics which would later claim her life.
Although a few songs largely accompanied by guitars such as 'the Pearl' and 'the Vigilante' can be found on Heart Food, in my opinion, this album sounds just a little inconsistent at times compared to her debut album, due to its choice of slightly heterogeneous music genres. Yet, what renders it a singer-songwriter classic are the divinely crafted 'The Kiss' and the haunting closing track 'The Donor'. 'The Kiss' - a track with the ability to make you suffer from Stendhal syndrome immediately when you hear it, documents a marriage between the earthly and the spiritual rather than a dichotomy between them. On the one hand, you see earthly features such as sunbeams piercing through thick mists and stars 'bursting in the sky'; on the other hand, you have mystic creatures like the crystal choir who sings Holy tunes in perfect harmony in your sleep. I must say, I might just want this song to be played at my funeral, if I will ever have one, since what she describes here, which appears to be the land of nirvana, is permeated with peace and love with no hardship in sight. Sonically, 'The Kiss' is touched with Sill's Bachian orchestration, which immediately distinguishes it from all the other songs popular in the early 70s.
At last, we have the 8-minute 'The Donor', which was Sill’s attempt to ‘write a song, instead of directed at people, that will somehow induce a God to give us all a break’, as she once stated in a live recordings of this song. To borrow a term frequently used by Tori Amos, 'The Donor' is undoubtedly one masterpiece of 'sonic architecture'. It is majestic, sacred and at times labyrinthine, carefully decorated with multi-tracked vocals, piano and chimes. In the chorus, she continuously sang the prayer ‘Kyrie Eleison’, or ‘Lord, have mercy’, that never fails to give listeners chills; listening to this song feels like stepping into a cathedral with a roof that touches the starry vault of heaven.
The recent returns of several reclusive and ‘forgotten’ folk songstresses in the early 70s such as Vashti Bunyan, Linda Perhacs and Buffy Sante-Marie remind me of the fact that people will never have the opportunity to hear how Judee Sill’s music and her voice would have evolved to this day, that this beautiful pearl will never reappear. However, we can choose to remember and appreciate this woman whose goal was to touch people’s souls, to pass her music on to others to let it live and shine.
8 Jun 2016
Sydney
In fact, over the past year or so, I have become a loyal 'envoy' of hers, introducing her music to a lot of people I have come across. When the crystal piano intro of the 'The Kiss' with the patina of age kicks off from friends' stereos or phones, I can't help but to feel like I have built up a very special personal relationship with, if not Judee Sill the person, her music. What's more, after following her music for quite a while, I accidentally found this album pressed on vinyl while browsing through a thick stack of secondhand records at a flee market. I remember mysteriously hearing a calling from this album and starting humming the tunes of tracks on it, only just seconds before this cover, featuring Sill in a denim jacket looking pensive, emerged right in front of eyes. Looking surprised, the seller asked me 'How did you hear about her? I have not met anyone, especially a person as young as you, who even knows her! This is a gem and I wasn't sure to sell or keep it.'
<图片1>
Sill's tragic life is in stark contrast to her often jubilant musical arrangements. Her second album Heart Food, originally released in 1973, kicks off with a country-flavored 'There's a Rugged Road', on which she sings about a 'blindly faithful' Sisyphus figure schlepping to his kingdom of truth and happiness. Whether or not there is any linkage between the pilgrimage under Sill's pen and Albert Camus' absurdism is entirely up to the listeners to decide but one simply can not skip the uncanny resemblance. Different from the simplistic folksy approach on her self-titled debut album, originally released in 1971, Heart Food offers the listeners a more eclectic set of tracks such as 'Soldier of the Heart' which has received an exhilarating Rock'n'roll treatment while hiding her writhing underneath its glamorous surface. Sill's classic use of mystic metaphors has once again created this fearless spirit who comes to take her flying to the astral realm when 'the battlefield's so cold'. What might appear to be jovial is in fact a sharply satirical reflection of her struggles with loneliness, lack of artistic acknowledgement, prostitution and her reliance on narcotics which would later claim her life.
Although a few songs largely accompanied by guitars such as 'the Pearl' and 'the Vigilante' can be found on Heart Food, in my opinion, this album sounds just a little inconsistent at times compared to her debut album, due to its choice of slightly heterogeneous music genres. Yet, what renders it a singer-songwriter classic are the divinely crafted 'The Kiss' and the haunting closing track 'The Donor'. 'The Kiss' - a track with the ability to make you suffer from Stendhal syndrome immediately when you hear it, documents a marriage between the earthly and the spiritual rather than a dichotomy between them. On the one hand, you see earthly features such as sunbeams piercing through thick mists and stars 'bursting in the sky'; on the other hand, you have mystic creatures like the crystal choir who sings Holy tunes in perfect harmony in your sleep. I must say, I might just want this song to be played at my funeral, if I will ever have one, since what she describes here, which appears to be the land of nirvana, is permeated with peace and love with no hardship in sight. Sonically, 'The Kiss' is touched with Sill's Bachian orchestration, which immediately distinguishes it from all the other songs popular in the early 70s.
At last, we have the 8-minute 'The Donor', which was Sill’s attempt to ‘write a song, instead of directed at people, that will somehow induce a God to give us all a break’, as she once stated in a live recordings of this song. To borrow a term frequently used by Tori Amos, 'The Donor' is undoubtedly one masterpiece of 'sonic architecture'. It is majestic, sacred and at times labyrinthine, carefully decorated with multi-tracked vocals, piano and chimes. In the chorus, she continuously sang the prayer ‘Kyrie Eleison’, or ‘Lord, have mercy’, that never fails to give listeners chills; listening to this song feels like stepping into a cathedral with a roof that touches the starry vault of heaven.
The recent returns of several reclusive and ‘forgotten’ folk songstresses in the early 70s such as Vashti Bunyan, Linda Perhacs and Buffy Sante-Marie remind me of the fact that people will never have the opportunity to hear how Judee Sill’s music and her voice would have evolved to this day, that this beautiful pearl will never reappear. However, we can choose to remember and appreciate this woman whose goal was to touch people’s souls, to pass her music on to others to let it live and shine.
8 Jun 2016
Sydney
