You don't need a history lesson to love Life Is People, the third proper album by British singer-songwriter Bill Fay. If you've ever enjoyed the records of Pink Floyd or Randy Newman, Spiritualized or Wilco, the dozen gems here move between similar poles of spartan grace and outsized grandeur. The organ-abetted lilt of "The Healing Day" suggests Jeff Tweedy and Jay Bennett turning the page toward happiness a decade ago, while the gospel choir delivering the mantra of "Be at Peace with Yourself" might make you scan the credits for a J. Spaceman acknowledgment. The flinty "Empires" is a piano-led political tune written from a distance and with a dark, Newman-like wit, where the world's biggest timbers eventually yield to the teeming underbrush beneath. Its warped tones and terse delivery suggest Roger Waters coming back to Earth. Beautiful, patient and poignant, Life Is People is an expert singer-songwriter album, as dependent upon keen insight as it is upon meticulous arrangement.
But a history lesson makes Life Is People that much more meaningful. Bill Fay is 69 years old, and he hasn't released a proper studio album since his second, 1971's brilliant and acerbic Time of the Last Persecution. He'd stumbled into a recording contract with the Decca Nova/Deram imprint. As he admitted to WFMU in an interview last year, labels at that point scooped up an abundance of acts, hoping that at least something would turn into a best seller. "Somebody told me at the time," he said, "that their policy was to throw as many pieces of mud as possible at the wall, and hope that some would stick." Fay's records didn't stick, however, and neither did he. Deram dropped Fay and, in the 41 years since Persecution, he's recorded new material and consistently written new songs but never finished a complete record. Music, as he also told WFMU, was a private family affair for him as a child, with his aunts and uncles playing together and his mom occasionally sitting down at the family piano; he performed several times, but largely it seemed that, after stumbling toward fame through music, he wanted to keep the stuff to himself.
It was too late, though. Based only on the strength of those first two records and reissues, sporadic batches of leaked demos, and a terribly teasing collection called Tomorrow, Tomorrow and Tomorrow, issued 30 years after it was recorded, Fay's cult standing grew. Wilco covered "Be Not So Fearful", the gorgeous affirmation from his debut, and convinced Fay to join them onstage in 2007 and later during a 2010 Tweedy solo set. Then, last summer, Fay returned to a London studio for the first time in three decades with American producer Joshua Henry, a lifelong Fay fan who'd barely been alive for 30 years. With a band comprised of younger studio players and Ray Russell and Alan Rushton, who'd joined Fay for Persecution so long ago, they recorded the bulk of Life Is People in a little less than a month.
And now, back to the present: Life Is People doesn't feel at all like a late-life afterthought from a cult hero. Pointed and urgent but never pushy, Fay's songs offer pleas for redemption in a world drunk on its promise, coupled with a reassuring contentment for simply having lived this life. Fay chastises the way generations have refused to learn from their history, even as we stare into devices that allegedly offer all the answers we'd ever need. On the other hand, "Be at Peace With Yourself" extends existential reassurance-- that is, as Fay offers behind a tabernacle-sized mix of organ and choir arrangements, whoever you are is probably good enough. That's a thought echoed on "The Healing Day", a tender Revelation hymn that depends upon the belief that some cosmic help is always on the horizon. "Every battleground/ Is a place for sheep to graze," Fay sings during one his most eloquent bits ever. "When it all comes tumbling down/ All the palaces and parades."
But the record's two key songs, "The Never Ending Happening" and "This World", provide a crucial bridge between Fay's indignation and optimism. On the former, Fay's voice hang's worn but resilient above a simple, elliptical piano line; in these perfect four minutes, he considers death, God, birth, bird song, and war cries as one continuum. He's happy to have been involved, he admits, to have his tiny narrative shape a much bigger story: "Just to be part of it/ Is astonishing to me." The record's pop standout, "This World" springs from the somber end of "The Never Ending Happening" as if to offer the message that, appreciative as he may be, Fay isn't done quite yet. He and Wilco's Jeff Tweedy trade the verses and share the chorus, their simpatico voices both showing the signs and struggles of survival. (Fay also lands a wrenching solo cover of "Jesus, Etc." here, his voice turning Tweedy's resignation into observational candor.) As they dole out experiences with blue-collar worries and dismiss the corner drug dealer who offers "an easy way out," they sound enthused, as if overcoming the worries of the world is its own substantive reward for living. Though he's a quarter-century older, Fay temporarily lends Tweedy an energy that recalls the transition from Uncle Tupelo to Wilco. They're having fun.
In the past decade, a number of serpentine stories and bittersweet circumstances have revitalized the careers of musicians who, for whatever reason, were swallowed by the record industry and largely ignored by the world. To varying degrees, soul singers like Bettye LaVette, Solomon Burke, and Charles Bradley found ways to turn long flirtations with fame (or abject failure) into real or revived careers with new records on indie imprints. Thanks to collaborations with young producer Kieran Hebden, drummer Steve Reid finally became more than a footnote of rock and jazz history; when Bert Jansch linked with Drag City and Devendra Banhart, the inspiration to Led Zeppelin and what had become New Weird America met a fresh generation of listeners. Life Is People and the tale that accompany it are strong enough to do the same for Fay, to at last make his reputation among many match his legacy among few. "There are miracles in the strangest of places," Fay sings at the start of the title track's seven-minute ascent, setting the scene for the string of tiny triumphs he sweetly lists. At the risk of overstating the case, Life Is People—the work of a 69-year-old family man, and the work of a lifetime—confirms its maker's own thesis.
