Customer Reviews

Tomorrow Tomorrow and Tomorrow

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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.

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."