Tomorrow Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Bill Fay | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (November 16, 2004)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Durtro / Jnana
• ASIN: B0006SSO54
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #452,332 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars No Tomorrow, April 26, 2005

By 

K. H. Orton (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Tomorrow Tomorrow and Tomorrow (Audio CD)

For fans who marveled over From The Bottom Of A Gradfather Clock, this is a must have. While Grandfather was a collection of demos recorded between 1966-70, this 1978-81 offering generally comes off more like an esoteric cross between Dark Side of the Moon & The Alan Parsons Project. That said, Fay's deep rooted melancholia is still there despite the dated production. As are those Beatlesque hooks. Things start off with the suitably spaced out "Strange Stairway". Despite the cheesy synths, "Planet Earth Daytime" could be Fay's answer to Sgt. Pepper's a "Day In The Life". The half spoken title track is as haunting and beautiful as it gets. Though titles like "Life" & "Man" may seem a touch too deep and portentious, both are quite moving peices. Fans will either be thankful or frustrated by the medley of several "lost songs", which are essentially incomplete glimpses of some amazing stuff that suffered from tape deterioration. Highlights here include my personal favorite, "Just A Moon", the Syd Barrett-esque, "Sam" & "Lamp Shining". While not as satisfying as Grandfather, Tomorrow should be enough to tide the intruiged over till the promised release of his 2 now legenday Decca albums this May. If you're a fan of Nick Drake or Elliott Smith, Bill Fay might be the well kept secret you've been looking for.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, hooky, strange..., January 29, 2006

By 

Lord Summerisle (Austin, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tomorrow Tomorrow and Tomorrow (Audio CD)

This is a lovely, odd record and I'm grateful to David Tibet or whomever was responsible for unearthing it from wherever it's been buried since its recording in the late '70s and early '80s. Fay's music is odd, lush, and inexplicably moving: I'm not a spiritual person, particularly, but songs like "Strange Stairway" tug at something deep within me. "Tomorrow" has emotional weight, but its songs are also masterfully constructed, even hooky in places, and Fay's overdubbed voices deepen the intimacy of his sound. He's backed by a sympathetic band here, three musicians who clearly share Fay's vision - they veer from folk to psych in the space of a few measures, and Gary Smith's guitar alternately caresses and cuts. I'm at a loss for apt comparisons - Syd Barrett, maybe, though Fay replaces Barrett's untethered whimsy with something more serious.

As a previous reviewer noted, the two halves of the album proper are interrupted by a set of nine tracks (not listed on the outside of the disc) that appear to be demos - the sound quality is rough, but the sometimes fragmentary songs are of consistently high quality. A nice bonus, if oddly placed.

Ideally, listeners should probably come to this one through Fay's two early '70s albums for Decca, "Bill Fay" and "Time of the Last Persecution" - the former finds Fay's simple, jewel-like songs lavishly set in arrangements for a 27-piece orchestra, while the latter is a much rockier affair (in both senses of the word). For the moment, both are back in print in nicely remastered versions from Eclectic Discs, so grab 'em while you can. Each is wonderful, and rewarding in its own way - but neither fully prepared me for the rough beauty and the mystery of "Tomorrow."

5.0 out of 5 stars Dalliances that Leave You Saying: "Oh, Samuel, That was Fun!", February 7, 2012

By 

C. A. Foster "the lamper-stang" (Texas) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Tomorrow Tomorrow & Tomorrow (Audio CD)

Bill Fay is a stunning musician. It is too bad he did not make an album every year. As the math seems now, he put out one for every five years: just about at Nine Inch Nails's rate of output.

Anyway, this Tomorrow album is a lot to handle. The amount of work put into the music and the layout are commensurate with even the most costly purchase. A tiny surprise for me: There are several hidden tracks in the middle of the album, named only inside the booklet. These are short, often noisy, sometimes distant and washed out fragments of song or melody; but they work as a very beautiful break from a highly orchestrated album. These fragments are chaotic, a rapid dial-twist from one side of the radio spectrum to the other.

I saw that Ray Russell was not playing guitar on this album, and I got disappointed. His guitar work on Time of the Last Persecution woke me up from a long comatose disinterest with my own guitar playing. Nevertheless, Bill Fay has excellent taste in fellow musicians. I have to wonder how much of the tight composition is his and how much is due to the group on this album, who met Fay at a concert and asked for a trial run with composing new material.

I find myself dazzled by the guitars, then suddenly by the drums, then there is a measure with a climbing bass run that grabs you by the very soul and controls you without holding you. Among these charms Bill Fay works with his spectral lyrics, his winsome piano and synthesizers that sound like pipe organs passing you by in a dark stairwell. I love this album.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow joins a few others that are turning me into the type of person who relistens to one album several times in a row. I would never, never do that until about a year ago. And whatever album started it is not up for discussion now. This moment is reserved for the dedicated reverence of Bill Fay, whose music is beautiful. He is the Song of Solomon, the medieval sagas, transcribed into very smooth music. He strikes a perfect balance between the God-loving hippie, the cynical doomsayer; but always a good friend. Even for the most preachy atheist I think Bill Fay's cosmic marvelling would be infectious.