Album Reviews

"Keep Your Jesus Out of My Face,” is a bumper sticker I\\'m contemplating having printed so I can stick it on my car\\'s rear end, and tell people who are offended where they can stick it. That\\'s just how I feel about religion, and Jesus, and Yahweh, and Zeus and Poseidon, and Mary, and the rest of the endless myths that hobble and delude mankind into thinking the latest iteration is the truth, the way, the best, my way, or the highway, or whatever."Keep Your Jesus Out of My Face,” is a bumper sticker I'm contemplating having printed so I can stick it on my car's rear end, and tell people who are offended where they can stick it. That's just how I feel about religion, and Jesus, and Yahweh, and Zeus and Poseidon, and Mary, and the rest of the endless myths that hobble and delude mankind into thinking the latest iteration is the truth, the way, the best, my way, or the highway, or whatever. More evil has been committed in the name of religion than any other institution invented by mankind and nothing you're going to tell me is going to turn me around.

I am overtly hostile to the thought of organized religion of any kind, though I have nothing against spirituality and a personal relationship with some possible unknown entity or ectoplasm, or whatever could possibly have “created” everything. And I have loved living in a country where people were once free to practice their superstition without government interference or encouragement. Today, unfortunately, we have “faith-based” government initiatives and religious dogma-tinged social policy dealing with issues like abortion, contraception, and sex education. The policies perfectly mirror the out-of-touch-with-reality mindset that helped create them.

That's just how I feel about religion, and if I offend you, tell your friends. Maybe that's how and why I missed out on Judee Sill when it was originally issued on David Geffen's Asylum Records, back in 1971.

Way ahead of the current religious revival, Sill arrived on the secular music scene looking like a hippie version of “The Singing Nun,” conspicuously wearing a large cross on the cover of her debut. Perhaps it was the song “Jesus Was a Crossmaker,” (produced by Graham Nash) that kept me away, or the preciousness of the name “Judee.” Whatever it was, I got bad vibes.

Now, 30+ years later, blessed with an enthusiastic endorsement from no less than the esteemed Jim O'Rourke (Sonic Youth, Wilco, various great solo outings), Sill's two Asylum albums have been reissued all analog from the original tapes on 180g vinyl by 4 Men With Beards Records. Limited edition CDs are available from Rhino.

Listening all these years later makes it clear that the folkie Sill arrived on the scene armed with the three “J”s: Jackson, Joni and of course Jesus. David Geffen lavished a great deal of attention and money on Sill, putting the great Henry Lewy in charge of production and engineering, giving the budget sufficient funds to include elaborate orchestrations and gatefold packaging the finished product sumptuously on fine stock.

Sill mixes Mitchell's lyrical sensibilities—though with far greater reliance on religious themes and imagery, Browne's chordal and melodic inventions and a curious musical mix of Bach, Country and Western and maybe some Jim Croce and Paul Simon thrown in for good measure.

On the precious opener, Sill, not finding much of interest in this life, sings of waiting for God and hitching a ride on the "Astral plane" and a trip to “the other side”—despite having had her faith tested by false prophets.

There's a song about a “Phantom Cowboy” (guess who?) and one with serpents, swordplay, demons, and a lamb that runs away with a crown. You (or at least I) have to listen though some of these lyrics to appreciate Sills's melodic gifts, her smooth, soothing, and happily unadorned voice, and especially her rich, string drenched arrangements supporting an acoustic guitar underpinning.

One of the album's highlights is “Lady-O,” with its gentle, flowing baroque melody, and angelic chorus. Sill says she'll grow wings, and ride silver strings, and unless I'm way off base, she's loving and needing the Virgin Mary. “Jesus Was a Crossmaker,”—from the Jackson Browne school of melody, ( it will remind you of “Rock Me on the Water") —is yet another pleasing entry in an album that grows on you with every play.

The skillful orchestrations by Sill are lush and inviting. Even an agnostic or atheist will be taken with the pedal steel, the strings and the acoustic guitars so richly recorded in the analog domain.

If you're a Joni Mitchell devotee and recognize the brilliance of Henry Lewy's production and engineering prowess, you'll understand why this Judee Sill album is so sonically enticing.

Ironically, Sill died of a heroin overdose at the tender age of 34. Her devotees claim she was in “tremendous pain,” after breaking her back for the second time. How she did that for the first time, not to mention the second, I don't know. In any case, whether it was a case of unrelenting pain or of trading one addiction (Jesus) for another (heroin), we may never know.

What I do know is that Judee Sill

captures a moment in musical and recorded time many or us cherish. Depending upon how you react to “religiosity,” Sill's debut may or may not serve you extremely well 34 years after it was first released.

It's a gorgeous piece of record-making early 70s style in any case, and therefore recommended. I'm glad to have made its acquaintance at at time when my anger with religion has been sublimated into soft disgust. The sound is gorgeous.