Judee Sill

Judee Sill's second and final album is more reflective of the troubled (and short) life she lived. Darker than her self-titled debut, Sill's 1973 sophomore effort managed to make sunny instruments like pedal steel, fiddle, horns and guitar sound as melancholic as the sparse piano and cold string arrangements here. Her doubled vocal tracks float over the instrumentation with ghostly beauty, especially on songs like "The Kiss." "Soldier of the Heart" offers up an admirable attempt at rock 'n' roll.

Beneath a lusher surface, her voice enriched with overdubs and less idiosyncratically accented, Sill has become a real militant. Christ is a "Soldier of the Heart," a "Vigilante": although "the chosen are few" we're supposed to "see how His mercy shines," presumably because he saves any of us sinners at all. Last shall be first or not, this is pretty repulsive as ideology, yet until the kyrie eleisons at the climax I find it paradoxically seductive. Say she's a mad saint instead of a sainted madwoman and make room for another rock crazy. (Grade - B+)