The history of popular music is filled with stories of triumph and tragedy. Among the latter, no story is more tragic than that of Judee Sill. After a difficult childhood which found her turning to drugs and crime, Sill found solace in songwriting. Her light folk-rock style became known as the “Laurel Canyon” sound. She became the first artist ever signed to the brand new Asylum Records in the early ’70s, and toured as an opening act for David Crosby and Graham Nash.
Sill’s self-titled first album was released in 1971, and less than two years later, in the spring of 1973, she followed it with the album Heart Food. Both were critically acclaimed. Neither met with any commercial success. Following the failure of her second album to find an audience, Judee Sill disappeared from the music scene.
Sill has remained largely forgotten, a footnote in the history of southern California music, but there have been those who have tried to keep her name alive for many years. Among them is noted producer Jim O’Rourke, who mixed a collection of Sill’s unreleased songs. Warren Zevon recorded a cover of Sill’s most well known song, “Jesus Was a Crossmaker,” for his 1995 album Mutineer, and current Seattle sensations Fleet Foxes play Sill’s “Crayon Angels” in their live set. Her two Asylum albums were released as a double-CD set with bonus material in 2005, leading to a reassessment of her career.
This week, the indie label American Dust has released Crayon Angel: A Tribute to the Music of Judee Sill. The 15-track album includes covers of some of Sill’s most enduring songs by roster of some of the leading lights, and lesser knowns, of independent music. As is almost always the case with tribute albums, Crayon Angel is a hit-or-miss affair, succeeding when the artists allow the strength of Sill’s songs to emerge, and failing utterly when the artists try to make it all about themselves. These songs don’t need reinterpretation. Mostly they just need to be heard by an audience who are unfamiliar with Sill. (more…)
Jim O’Rourke is either a master provocateur or just plain infuriating; it all depends on how you feel about his career as a whole. If you liked his experimental acoustic music with David Grubbs as Gastr Del Sol, you might not have been thrilled with his table-top noise compositions. If you enjoyed his indie-pop albums like 
and 
, you might not have appreciated his tenure with Sonic Youth. If you liked his output overall, his hiatus while being Wilco’s go-to producer might have ticked you off. It’s fair to say that you can never be sure what you’ll get from O’Rourke.
album, also acoustic-rooted and instrumental yet four tracks in length. The flow of the music is that of O’Rourke’s guitar moving into crystalline passages, then getting punctuation from other instruments, then falling back into the guitar. These shifts provide the sense of songs within the piece, but make no mistake about it — this is a single musical statement. Producer O’Rourke gets the best of musician O’Rourke as, around the 19-minute mark, he plays with the piano parts, cutting them digitally to create a staccato, stuttering effect. Laid underneath is a brief electric guitar run, in and out, almost subliminally. Then at 23 minutes in, things subside back into organ wash, acoustic guitar, and it’s on to the next “feel.” 
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