In March 1975, Jim Sullivan mysteriously disappeared outside Santa Rosa, New Mexico. His VW bug was found abandoned, his motel room untouched. Some think he got lost in the desert. Some think he fell foul of a local family with alleged mafia ties. Some think he was abducted by aliens.
By coincidence – or perhaps not – Jim’s 1969 debut album was titled U.F.O. The album was a fully realised album of scope and imagination, a folk-rock record with its head in the stratosphere. Sullivan’s voice is deep and expressive like Fred Neil with a weathered and worldly Americana sound like Joe South, pop songs that aren’t happy – but with filled with despair. The album is punctuated with a string section (that recalls David Axelrod), other times a Wurlitzer piano provides the driving groove (as if Memphis great Jim Dickinson was running the show). U.F.O. is a slice of American pop music filtered from the murky depths of Los Angeles, by way of the deep south.
light in the attic
jim sullivan story

For her fourth studio record Pint Of Blood, Jolie Holland loosely credits classic influences ranging from Neil Young to The Velvet Underground to The Rolling Stones. But it’s the sound of Lucinda Williams that emerges the most on this record, as she similarly conveys a sense of raw emotion striking the deepest of chords. In particular, her voice despairingly flutters on the album’s opening track as she cries out, “I can’t believe you treated me like all those girls / all those sweet girls go home to cry” with the utmost conviction. It’s a chorus that simultaneously stuns and crushes, resonating as one of the year’s most poignant musical moments.
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