|
Bill Fay Group, "Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow" |
|
|
|
Written by Jonathan Dean
|
|
Sunday, 27 February 2005 |
More than 35 years after Bill Fay's work first surfaced on Decca
Records, the unique singer-songwriter is finally getting his due. I
suppose its inevitable that an artist who recorded two such singularly
idiosyncratic and intensely rendered albums—1970's Bill Fay and 1971's Time of the Last Persecution—and
then permanently disappeared off the radar screen would be the subject
of much speculation.
Durtro/Jnana
In Bill Fay's case, this speculation has often
taken an unfortunately hyperbolic form, with many critics painting a
portrait of a psychotic loner whose music was clearly the result of
drug burnout and paranoia, a "mad bearded Rasputin" with a resemblance
to Charles Manson (a reference to the photograph of Fay on the cover
his second LP). This finally prompted Bill Fay to write an angry letter
to The Wire last year, setting the record straight: that he was simply
a songwriter who had long hair and a beard "as a lot of people did
then," and that he had never been heard from again only because he lost
his contract with Decca after the poor sales of his two albums, and
couldn't get signed anywhere else. "I still continued to write and
record but not with a label," Fay continued, and Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow
is the first evidence of that work. This album, recently released as a
digipack CD by Durtro/Jnana (David Tibet has long been a champion of
Fay's music), contains Bill Fay's third album, the follow-up to Persecution,
recorded 1977-1981 but never released until now, 25 years later. Bill
Fay Group is the name given to Fay's teaming on this record with The
Acme Quartet, a misleadingly named improvising trio of guitar, bass and
drums. These smaller arrangements create a more intimate backing for
Fay's intensely personal, soul-searching songs that provides an
interesting counterpoint to the huge, Scott Walker-style MOR strings
(along with searing fuzz guitar and climactic passages of free jazz)
that characterized the first two LPs. This is not to suggest that the
music on Tomorrow is simple, however. It is far from simple.
The group utilizes a complex interplay of competently played jazz and
psych-rock elements with sudden left turns into areas of psychedelic
abstraction, as well as vocal doubling, stereo panning and a
multritracked backing chorus. At times the effect is very reminiscent
of the mid-70s work of Pink Floyd, at others Soft Machine. Roger Waters
and Robert Wyatt at their best, however, cannot equal the haunting,
apocalyptic lyrics and intuitive chamber-pop songwriting that seems to
flow so easily from Bill Fay. Over the course of 20 tracks, the artist
never misses a hook, creating haunting pop songs that recall the
instantly memorable melodies of a Paul McCartney with the chilling
doomsday prophesizing of a Current 93. If Time of the Last Persecution represented the songwriter's emotionally wrenching exegesis of Armageddon, then Tomorrow
points to a doorway out of tribulation and purgatory. After climbing a
"Strange Stairway" to "Spiritual Mansions," and confronting
unflinchingly the hypocrisies of life and man, Fay sings triumphantly:
"We are raised/We sit beside Him now/We are raised." Bill Fay navigates
a symbolic world informed by Christian prophecy, but illuminated from
within by personal revelation. His weathered voice and unique musical
genius are able to mediate these impossibly vast concepts straight into
the realm of the individual. It's outrageous to think that this album
might never have seen the light of day had it not been for the efforts
of Durtro/Jnana and the Bill Fay Group, as it represents the inevitable
and necessary third chapter to the trilogy and a sublime masterpiece of
modern pop music.
samples:
|
