(American Dust/Other Tongues)

A touching tribute to a tragic life

Judee Sill isn’t a name that many people know, but it is one known by the right people: Graham Nash and David Crosby had her open for them, The Hollies covered her, Joni Mitchell was present as she recorded her second (and final) album. Were it not for her falling out with David Geffen, depression, and a spiral back into drug use that ended in a cocaine overdose and death in 1979, Sill may well have been as famous as any of the above figures. Crayon Angel, a collection in which a bevy of famous and not-so-famous folk types cover selections from her oeuvre, will appeal to both those who are yet to discover Sill’s work and those who already know and love her work. For the former, there’s the enticement of big names: Beth Orton, Bill Callahan, and Owen Pallett (under his Final Fantasy pseudonym); for the latter, there are two songs that Sill wrote but never recorded (fortunately, the classically-trained Sill took care to write out sheet music for all her songs). Of the straight-up covers, Pallett’s deserves credit for emphasising the latent baroque in her work (Sill once claimed that her only inspirations were Bach and Pythagoras); of the two new songs, Bill Callahan’s take on For A Rainbow is remarkable because it harkens back to his last two albums as Smog. It’s impossible not to listen to these delicate, beautifully-written songs without thinking of the personal tragedy that fuelled them, but that tragedy doesn’t overshadow Sill’s remarkable achievements here.

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CHAD PARKHILL

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