Legendary musician Bill Fay is still making music that is spiritual and genuine. The artist, the same one who had not recorded between 1971 and 2012 or so, is back with a new release, Countless Branches, out on Friday via Dead Oceans. Assisted by one-time Wolfhound Matt Deighton, the pianist and singer here offers up the kind of compositions that feel gently ripped from the soul.
"In Human Hands" is delicate and plaintive, while the more spry "How Long, How Long" gently skirts the edges of what we'd call folk-rock. If Fay is not altogether interested in making stuff that neatly fits inside a genre box, that's to our benefit as listeners. "Filled with Wonder Once Again" is a sincere expression of human awareness, while "Time's Going Somewhere" finds Fay riding a rather mournful melodic figure. "Love Will Remain", the most direct thing here, seems the kind of thing that could inspire any number of modern songwriters, folks like Ed Harcourt and Thom Yorke, even as Bill Fay prefers to use here a rather simple, spare hook on the piano.
So much of what works on Countless Branches is due to Bill Fay's broken vocals, vocals that suggest the singer is caught, perpetually, on the edge of some great emotional wave. Combined with the simplest of keyboard lines, his voice becomes a divine thing, enough of one that this material feels both warm and pristine. Countless Branches is serious yet easy to embrace, pure in artistic vision and yet entirely unpretentious. What's here is lovely and I'd defy anyone to not have some emotional connection to some of what's here at a minimum.
Countless Branches is out on Friday via Dead Oceans.
More details on Bill Fay via the official Facebook page.
[Photo: Mathew Parri Thomas]