One of the great, lost folk singers of her time, Judee Sill has earned a posthumous swell of interest in her work and, as this single-disc set demonstrates, for good reason. Having survived an abusive childhood, drug addiction and a stint in prison, Sill took to songwriting with a ferocity that eventually landed her a contract with David Geffen’s Asylum label (then home to Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon and J.D. Souther) and earned her a hit when The Turtles covered her majestic “Lady-O.” Here, she draws from her first album with “Lady-O,” “The Lamb Ran Away With the Crown” “Jesus Was a Cross Maker.” The March 23, 1972 set, cut at the Paris Theatre in London, finds Sill sounding nervous and falling prey to the excessive chattiness that overtakes virtually every singer-songwriter early in the career. But the music is pure magic, with breathtaking versions of “Enchanted Sky Machines” and “The Kiss.” A second set, recorded for In Session With Bob Harris a few weeks later, finds her sounding more confident and “Down Where the Valleys are Low,” which seems tentative and muddled (this collection’s only misstep) in its initial appearance comes off brilliantly and stands easily as one of Sill’s best.

Contemporary listeners will be tempted to draw comparisons between Sill and her contemporary Joni Mitchell and while the genius of these two women is a commonality, each stands in a class of her own, as the April 5 ’72 version of “The Phoenix” and “The Kiss” demonstrate.

Sill eventually had a falling out with manager and label boss David Geffen and it very much cost her her recording career. A car accident led to a spiral back into addiction and pain and she died in November 1979 of a cocaine overdose, another tragic figure who left our world too soon under the most unfortunate circumstances. This is Sill in her finest hour, not entirely carefree but certainly in possession of something few can dream of and none can touch. - Jedd Beaudoin (2007, The Daily Copper)