RIP Cynthia Dall

Impossibly sad news arose on Monday that Cynthia Dall had died last week. The reclusive, reluctant solo artist —best known as Bill 'Smog' Callahan's collaborateur and muse in the mid-'90s— passed away in her Sacramento home. She was only 41 years old.

Dall first appeared on the Smog song "Wine-Stained Lips," and she played a huge role on his classic 1995 LP, Wild Love. With the encouragement of Callahan, Jim O'Rourke, and her label, Drag City, Dall —though barely trained as a musician— made two solo records, 1996's Untitled (initially released under the name Untitled before being repressed under her own name) and 2002's Sound Restores Young Men.

When putting together a list of sadly-forgotten '90s bands recently, Dall was one of the first people I thought of; Untitled is a strange, spartan, bagpipe-blasted record of peculiar magic that few seem to have heard.

After being coaxed back into making Sound Restores Young Men, Dall effectively retired. But, in a tribute to Dall by Drag City, she was very much portrayed as an active artist.

"When Cynthia rang us the week before last with an update on the progress of new demos, we were glad to know it; glad to think of her getting her music together and to think of another chapter in the Dall Saga," the label wrote. "It is stunning not merely because of the loss of that vision and that unheard record; more stunning and hurtful is to know that we won't be talking to her anymore."