Tomorrow Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Bill Fay devotees who longed for more music beyond the obscure English singer/songwriter’s 1970 eponymous debut album and 1971’s Time of the Last Persecution can now rejoice. Fay’s long-lost third album has finally been released, with bonus gems totaling a generous 20 songs. As with Judee Sill, many of Fay’s folk-based songs blend cultish spiritual curiosities with beautiful melancholy, sometimes orchestrated and other times stripped down. “Strange Stairway” opens with overlapped keyboard arrangements, fretless bass, and Ray Russell playing electric guitar through a multitude of effects. Fay’s voice takes a slightly more commanding presence with harmonies and overdubbed parts, immediately noticeable on “Spiritual Mansions,” where he sings over a bleak and beautiful score (rather than hide under it). The standout song “Planet Earth Daytime” shape-shifts like a mini suite with a picturesque narrative. Throughout, synthesizers fall somewhere between the darker sides of David Gates and Bob Welch, most noticeably on the haunting “Hypocrite.”