Bill Fay - Countless Branches [LP]

Vinyl LP pressing. 2019 release. The great Bill Fay returns with the third album in the celebrated second phase of his recording career. "21 years ago, Colin Miles of See For Miles records dropped a pebble in a pond." says Fay. It was Miles who, on a gut instinct, reissued Bill Fay's albums for Deram - records made in 1970 and 1971 and deleted shortly afterwards - which Miles had always admired. Rave reviews and endorsements from the likes of Jim O'Rourke (Tortoise) and Jeff Tweedy (Wilco) led to a huge revival of interest in this vanished artist. Fay, now 76, was not actually a hermit but a quiet, private person who had withdrawn from a music world changed to the point where he felt no longer involved. But he had continued to make music almost every day in the intervening decades. "Colin said to me, 'You wanna get out there, Bill'," Fay says, chuckling at the memory. "I replied, 'I'm a corner-of-the-room person, Colin'."