Seattle-based songwriter J. Tillman is now probably best known as a member of Fleet Foxes, but he"s also notched up a number of rather excellent solo recordings. These two albums were released in highly limited quantities during 2004 and 2005: the first, I Will Return was issued as a self-released CD-R, before Long May You Run, J. Tillman surfaced in a slightly more widely available pressing (well, 150 copies). The voice is surely the thing that marks Tillman out from so many of his contemporaries and it sounds just amazing from the very outset of his career, matched up with simple guitar plucking and haunting cello on "Lilac Hem", only to slip into a sort of ethereal mumble on "Our Mother"s Ghost". I Will Return is really quite magnificent - not to mention sharply produced, so the sheer austerity of its follow-up comes as something of a surprise, sounding incredibly lo-fi and intimate, yet still preserving the essential dynamics of the songwriter"s mournful, low-key material. Fargo.