Fay To Go

Bill Fay has been a guiding musical noise to me over the past six months. He sings with the wisdom of a guy that's been embraced by the music industry, then ignored for a few decades before the reappraisal and the dignified return. You may have seen him on 'Later... With Jools' this week, beautifully understated on 'The Never Ending Happening', an old fella with the piano and some steady metaphysics.

People differ over the exact chronology but 'Life Is People' is his first proper collection of new music in over 30 years. That's quite a gap, and in his rare interviews, he doesn't provide too much information about the interim. What we do know is that he's been

thinking plenty about the big themes. Like the pain in your soul, the certain destination that is death and the possibility of a divine figure up there, some place.

Mind you, his early records, 'Bill Fay' and 'Time Of The Last Persecution' were never full of laughs. Back then, he was musing about his shed, the war dead and the phoney representation of the world. His new record is way out of fashion also, but that's surely part of the fascination. Jeff Tweedy from Wilco has been a longstanding fan and he has helped to coax this album into being.

The voice is a wonderful, worn instrument that makes Leonard Cohen sound sprightly. Meanwhile those lyrical meditations are delivered with the cracked tone of a venerable songwriter like David Ackles.

If you're the kind of person who forages for online tracks, rather than full albums, then I suggest that most collections lives will be bettered by 'Be At Peace With Yourself' and 'The Healing Day'. Pure balm for the heart.

See the Jools clip here, while you can:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p011p20n