She's a Bandit and a Heartbreaker

Reflecting on the genius of Judee Sill.

During the pandemic I wrote a Twitter thread looking at each of the songs on the two albums Judee Sill released during her lifetime. I didn’t get round to the posthumous collections, but who knows, maybe after this I will.

Judee Sill (1971)

With a loping stride and unexpected bursts of clarinet and falsetto, opener ‘Crayon Angels’ offers clues of what's to come. Religious imagery is outweighed by new-age fluff, the language cute rather than ecstatic. A too-gentle introduction to a body of work that is anything but.

At first, 'The Phantom Cowboy' promises more of the same, but the song quickly diverts somewhere stranger. There’s no chorus - narrative verses turn declarative, heralded by distant brass & agitated strings. It’s no longer angels laughing in Sill’s dreams, but an American ghost.

The first two tracks are apprentice-work, limbering up within the confines of late-60s folk. But 'The Archetypal Man' couldn’t be by anyone else. A western ballad of soft guitar and sweet pedal steel, the song somehow pivots into a multi-tracked baroque hymn and back again.

There have already been hints of Sill's odd, eroticised Christianity, but in 'The Lamb Ran Away with the Crown' a romantic theology starts to fully emerge. Ophidian asides, drawn swords and a pesky Lamb of God converge on a battleground of multiplying harmonies.

With its hushed vocal accompanied by a gorgeously conventional string quartet, ‘Lady O’ sounds like the song your most bohemian friend promised to write for your wedding, if that friend just happened to be a genius.

Kazantzakis knew what Christ was carving in his workshop. ‘Jesus Was a Crossmaker’ borrows an image from the novel and whittles it into an olive branch for an unfaithful lover. Sill’s vision transfigures his betrayal from mundane to mythical - he’s a bandit and a heartbreaker.

‘Ridge Rider’ takes us back out West: a Manichaean gaucho walks the line, unaware of his constant companion. Whoever it is - God or the singer herself - they guide him towards an ethereal outro where slide guitar, muted horn and harmonica weave around Sill’s cooing voice.

The doomed man Sill would rescue from his tomb in ‘My Man on Love’ could be her lover or her saviour. Perhaps she’d like him to be both. Either way, resurrection awaits, signalled by a chiming bell and celeste. A song of strange, tender evangelism.

By turns a lyric of longing, ambivalence and acceptance, ‘Lopin’ Along Thru the Cosmos’ opens an otherworldly one-two. Ambling and personal instead of strident and symbolic, the vocal is pure and unadorned. Sill’s work only offers flashes of optimism; this is among the brightest.

‘Enchanted Sky Machines’ continues the extraterrestrial theme. The title recalls the occult ufology of artist Marjorie Cameron, who Sill might have encountered during her days in Laurel Canyon. But despite the secrets, power and magic, it’s still the gentle who are taken home.

The lyrics of debut album closer ‘Abracadabra’ are two verses of uncertainty, fear and opposition, capped off with a short incantation promising knowledge and resolution. If only it had been that easy.

Heart Food (1973)

‘There’s a Rugged Road’ opens in familiar western territory. You could mistake it for a paraphrase of ‘Crayon Angels’, with fiddle instead of clarinet. Then the pace staggers, lurching into a chorus that carries us from trails and prairies towards the last true frontier.

‘The Kiss’ exists in a territory all of its own. It could be an earnest prayer or a song of physical longing. Yet as in the ecstatic tradition of Teresa of Avila, Sill’s ‘sweet communion’ ultimately suggests that real faith is often both.

Inevitably, ‘The Pearl’ sounds fallible after what has come before. But the song’s slightness isn’t just down to contrast. One of the least memorable tracks on either album, the lyrics are glibly naive while the string-and-banjo backing is sloppy rather than striking.

‘Down Where the Valleys Are Low’ is Sill at her most Nyro-esque. The song mutates every few bars, the only constant being a staccato organ that sounds like it was borrowed from the local mega-church. A tiny gem with a lovely, loopy backing vocal.

If two albums and twenty songs is enough room to establish traditions, then ‘The Vigilante’ fits into one of Sill’s favorites. A badlands archetype dividing his time between the sacred and mundane: eyes on the horizon, boots on his feet.

Opposite the introspection of ‘The Kiss’, ‘Soldier of the Heart’ hurtles along with a piano-driven euphoria that’s almost enough to make an unbeliever join the crusade. Heart, love and promise. God, what a song.

Although it’s low key musically, ‘The Phoenix’ features some of the most elaborate imagery on either album. Elsewhere Sill’s ambivalence is a source of pain and guilt, but in a triplet that caps first and last verses, the push-pull of belief sounds almost playful.

‘When the Bridegroom Comes’ is blue-eyed gospel that wouldn’t raise an eyebrow from even the most conservative congregation. With a simple backing of solo piano, it also contains one of Sill’s purest vocals.

If ‘The Donor’ was the only song she’d ever recorded, Judee Sill’s reputation wouldn’t suffer much. It is a complex, minor key, multi-tracked plea for mercy. Almost eight minutes of begging God for a break, then at the death - where else - a bright chromatic peal of piano and bells.