'TIL THE CHRIST COME BACK

Listen to 'TIL THE CHRIST COME BACK by Bill Fay.

This is another obscure British folkie, though when this album was reissued a year or two ago, you may have seen his name bantered around. The key to the obscure British folkie reissue marketing game is to compare your offering to Nick Drake, and so the "uncompromising starkness" of Bill Fay's 1970 album, "Time of the Last Persecution," got compared to "Pink Moon" more than a few times.

The problem is, for me, is that the music isn't that bleak at all. It's stripped down (read: slashed recording budget) but nothing like Nick Drake. The lyrics are on the dark side, poetical, metaphorical, and (here literally) apocalyptic, but don't really evoke the submerged turmoil of "Pink Moon." It's a little more surface. Frankly, he sounds more like Cat Stevens with a thing for Black Sabbath.

These aren't meant to be criticisms! 'Til The Christ Come Back is definitely one of my favorites in my current rotation, and if telling you it was just like the song in that famous Volkswagen commercial would get you to listen to it, I would.

Photo: In repose (4).