originally written by Mick Houghton (Uncut Magazine): Until Recently, Judee Sill and her two Asylum albums were all but forgotten. Her story is so tragic as to be nearly unbelievable, the antithesis of the Californian dream, even though she recorded for California's dream label. But a resurgence of interest has prompted the appearance of the meticulous Dreams Come True, a collection of unreleased material that includes her final work-in-progess album, mixed by left-field auteur, Sonic Youth member and long-time Sill aficionado Jim O'Rourke. Finally, it helps tell Sill's complete story, both through the eyes of those who knew her and through her own stunning music.

Sill signed to David Geffen's newly founded Asylum Records - the label that epitomised mellow West Coast Rock - in 1970....unlike her distinguished labelmates, Sill's career failed to ignite. Eighteen months after 1973's Heart Food, and having endured three months of agonising recuperation following corrective back surgery, Sill abandoned the recording of her third album and disappeared without a trace until, in November 1979, news broke of her suicide from a cocaine and codeine overdose.

It seemed the inevitable end to such a free-falling life...her father, a cameraman at Paramount Studios died when she was only eight and her mother remarried and relocated to LA. Sill's family life then disintegrated. Her mother succumed to downers and alcohol, her stepfather Ken Muse - an award winning animator for Tom & Jerry - allegedly abused her. When her brother, the only stable influence in her life, left home during high school, she transformed into the proverbial wild child. She and a partner began a series of gas station hold-ups that saw Sill wind up in reform school. Already experimenting with drugs, on release in 1964 she moved from dope to daily LSD consumption and ended up back in jail for narcotics offences and passing forged checks. Her drug-world connections, and the time she spent hanging out in jazz and folk clubs, now drew her into musical circles. Sill's first influences had been, predictably the folk of Joan Baez and Buffy Sainte-Marie. On home recordings from 1968 included on Dreams Come True, Sill is captured singing such traditional fare as "500 miles" - utterly charming but no indication of the artistry to come.

In jail, she began writing songs, one of which - "Dead Time Bummer Blues" (also on Dreams Come True) was recorded by LA garage band The Leaves. Sill met them through pianist Bob Harris, whom she later married, and with whom she first started dabbling with Heroin. Before long she was dealing again and turning tricks to support a serious habit that she combatted for the rest of her life....

The eponymous debut, released in 1971, was a revelation. Its immediate impact comes from the purity of her voice, oblique lyricism and bewitching hymn-like songs. Well-received, the album still wound up marginalised, despite the Graham Nash produced "Jesus Was A Cross Maker" being heavily promoted. An archetypical Sill song, cloaked in religious imagery and with Jesus depicted as a sexual predator, it failed to resonate with a public that preferred the more anondyne "You've Got a Friend".

Heart Food which appeared two years later, had the same lyrical deviance but more stunning musicality, swathed in expansive Bach-like arrangements and exquisite vocal harmonies. Closing song "The Donor" grows into an epic choral requiem intoning "Kyrie Eleison" (lord have mercy). It's as if Sill was writing her own epitaph.

Heart Food suffered poor sales and diminished critical response. Sill's lyrics, displaying a deep philosophical core that reflected her fascination with alchemy, theosophy and obscure literature, failed to engage people. She wasn't kidding, telling NME in 1971 that her influences were "Bach, Pythagoras and Ray Charles". ...her liason with Asylum ended and Sill slid into cult obscurity. Dreams Come True picks up the story but also takes us back gathering up nascent folksy recordings and some of Sill's rare early songs. ...its the last recordings from late 1974 that give real substance.

Considering the aborted outcome of those sessions at Mike Nesmith's studios, Sill's songs and outlook are remarkably positive at times, with some of her most directly personal and penetrable lyrics, such as the opening "That's the Spirit", soulful and uplifting, recalling Laura Nyro. All recorded live with Sill at the piano or on guitar instructing a basic four-piece band, the arrangements are both complex and upbeat. Her lead vocals are live, but with up to six- or seven-part harmonies gracefully and sparsely embellishing the sound. "I never thought to try and equal those (earlier recordings) except in spirit, how she seemed to like the colour of her instruments", says Jim O'Rourke of his work on the rediscovered masters. "I wanted the music to stand on its own and to be about nothing but itself. And the moment of soloing up Judee's vocal track was, frankly, eerie...a serious thing! Not to be taken lightly."

No one knows how these tracks should have turned out, but O'Rourke's touch allows Sill's voice to retain its purity, spirituality, and emotion. Her transcendent lyricism is as acute as ever...

Sill aimed to make the listener "open up his heart" and you might want to check your pulse if you are not moved by her breathtaking recordings. As O'Rourke puts it: "Her Songs were simultaneously personal and incredibly grand. If people sangthis stuff in church, a lot of us might still be there".

I must have been about 19 when I first heard Judee Sill around 1972. My girlfriend, Linda, bought the first album. Initially I thought it was soppy girl's music because I wanted to be dead noisy at the time. Between her two albums coming out, I think the New York Dolls had hit me, but she must have got under my skin because I found myself playing it when my girlfriend wasn't around.

I came to love both albums immensely. Later people would assume The Beach Boys' albums were a big influence on XTC, but I hadn't heard a Beach Boys album till around 1986, only singles. The mood and sound on our later records comes from hearing Judee Sill, the layered vocals and beautiful arrangements. My music would have been very different but for her. If you're a fan of the more soulful, hymnal side of Brian Wilson then she is the female equivalent.

She sits somewhere between the very controlled icing-sugar world of the Carpenters - the timbre of her voice is not dissimilar to Karen Carpenter - but her melodies are JS Bach with a 12-string guitar. They are some of the most achingly beautiful melodies and chord structures I have ever heard and I'd even say "The Kiss" is the most beautiful song ever recorded...

Her musicality struck me first, but I did pick up on her lyrics and found them oddly sexual in a religious way and oddly religious in a sexual way. They stir sexuality with a hymnal feeli. I'm sure people heard this stuff and thought she was a Jehovah's Witness or in some obscure religious sect and so would have nothing to do with it. She was strangely obsessed with the idea of Jesus as a stud, so in "Ridge Rider" you get Jesus portrayed as a Clint Eastwood type vigilante cowboy, or you get Jesus portrayed as bridegroom coing to do you over on your wedding night.

You wonder how on earth she could make such beautiful and soulful music having such a screwed-up life. It's sickening that she wasn't recognised while she was alive -- she must have just closed down. Its very easy to retreat into yourself when you feel no one gets what you are doing. Judee Sill is a million light years away from all those other denim-clad singer-songwriters - her music leaves the rest of that quasi-country crowd in the dirt.

She is a huge influence on me, and I think it went in so deep that many years later I would find myself writing songs or trying to sing like her and wonder if that's the way Judee Sill would have doine it. I would constantly refer back to her records in my head, even though I hadn't heard them in 20 years.