Includes eight songs intended for Judee Sill's unreleased third album, mixed by Jim O'Rourke. Also includes a 12 minute five song live video clip and a 68-page booklet with interviews and rare photos.
This is an Enhanced CD, which contains both regular audio tracks and multimedia computer files.
Personnel: Judee Sill (vocals, acoustic guitar, piano, Clavinet, Farfisa); Art Johnson (guitar, background vocals); Marc McClure (bottleneck guitar, background vocals); Bill Plummer (double bass, background vocals); Kevin Kelly (drums, background vocals).
DREAMS COME TRUE: HI / I LOVE YOU RIGHT HEARTILY HERE / NEW SONGS was originally released in 2005 with a painted self-portrait by the late singer-songwriter Judee Sill on the front cover. Reissued in 2008 with a photograph of the enigmatic Sill on the cover and lacking the expansive 72-page booklet, this two-disc set is otherwise unchanged from the original version. Compiled, sequenced and remixed by Jim O'Rourke, a post-rock musician whose solo records often touch on the early 1970s folk rock that was Sill's musical home, DREAMS COME TRUE: HI / I LOVE YOU RIGHT HEARTILY HERE / NEW SONGS contains on the first disc the eight songs that Sill had recorded for her never-released third album in 1974, along with four alternative versions. The second disc consists of demos, live tapes, and rough recordings from 1968 to 1974, plus a 12-minute home movie of Sill performing live.
When singer/songwriter Judee Sill died at the age of 35, she had issued two albums under her own name on David Geffen's Asylum label in 1971 and 1973, respectively. (Both have since been re-released with bonus material by Rhino's web-only Handmade imprint.) She had another one more or less in the can, recorded in 1974, but it was never finished or released. Her brand of folk music was enigmatic, full of light breeziness, nicely orchestrated (she wrote the charts herself), and drenched in a natural world mysticism that was more ethereal than the standard California fare of the early '70s. Dreams Come True is that lost third album, produced by Bill Plummer and track engineered by Emitt Rhodes, with the finished mix done by Jim O'Rourke in 2004, 30 years after the album was shelved. Water Records, quickly becoming the obscurantist's reissue label, has put together a lavishly presented package that houses Dreams Come True, bonus tracks in the form of demos and rehearsals, and a second disc entitled "Lost Songs," recorded by Tommy Peltier in his home studio and in his living room, which includes nine unreleased tracks and a 12-minute QuickTime movie of Sill performing in concert. The musical -- and production -- quality on Dreams Come True is high, given that it was recorded in a professional studio. Sill had been fully in possession of her muse when making it. Sill and Art Johnson did the musical charts, and she and Marc McLure arranged the vocals. Those familiar with her first two offerings will find this to be deeper in the vein, fleshed out, more focused. Sill could write hooks as well as she could write words, and these tracks, particularly "That's the Spirit," "The Living End," and "Til Dreams Come True," are moving emotionally, while not being at all mopey. They are jaunty and full of a sun-drenched airiness that stood out, even when the subject matter -- as spiritual as much of it was -- was melancholy. Sill never beat a lyric of a tune over the head. Disc two is, naturally, much rougher. This is for the fans, the hardcore devotees who feel there was never enough out there. Some of these tunes have appeared in various guises on the Internet, but these versions are cleaner, though there are almost no credits for the other musicians on the sessions. "Dead Time Bummer Blues" is a fully realized outing, while "Sunny Side Up Luck" is barely a sketch. The stunner on the set is the acoustic home recording of "Emerald River Dance." Its starkness and unpolished beauty are intoxicating, and give the listener a true portrait of the artist in an intimate environment. The package is lavish -- the CDs are in an envelope-folded slipcase and the 72-page book contains interviews with the artist, friends, family, and acquaintances, offering a deeply troubling and even heartbreaking slice of biography that underscores just how remarkable Sill's music was in lieu of her life circumstances. This is a treasure. ~ Thom Jurek
Spin (p.102) - "[A] bad-seed Joni Mitchell whose taste for Bach, modal jazz, gospel, and LSD informed songs that morph like schools of minnows in a sun-dappled stream."
Uncut (pp.116-117) - 4 stars out of 5 - "Sill's songs and outlook are remarkably positive at times, with some of her most directly personal and penetrable lyrics..."
The Wire (p.61) - "Sill's writing is infused with a sublime acid clarity, mixing forlorn blues with a revelatory, occult aspect and a lyrical obsession with religious exegesis."
Category: Rock & Pop
Release Date: 02/22/05
Originally Released: 2005
Mono / Stereo: Stereo
Discs: 2
Availability: Y
Studio / Live: Studio
Area: USA
Is Import: N
Distributor: City Hall