Judee Sill came out of the early 1970s singer-songwriter push, but she was never a part of the era’s bucolic tone. Today, Water Records continues its Judee Sill revival with reissues of the lone two albums from this almost forgotten 1970s American singer-songwriter. These remastered editions of her 1971 self-titled debut and 1973’s “Heart Food,” both of which originally appeared on David Geffen’s upstart Asylum label, make widely available what Rhino Handmade’s 2004 releases unleashed in only limited editions – an artist of singular vision whose music has been obscured by her mysterious death at the age of 35.

Sill’s unconventional voice would never be confused with Carole King’s dulcet phrasings; her music is too sophisticated to feel Jackson Browne easygoing. Sill’s forays into sacred and country music are, frankly, far too weird for the traditionalists in Nashville or the congregation. And, physically, Sill was far too idiosyncratic and unique to be mistaken for anything as obvious as Linda Ronstadt photogenic.

What initially captivated journalists and fans following the release of “Judee Sill” was Sill herself – a fiercely intelligent and independent woman with an apocryphal life story that sounded more scripted than lived. Sill lived every astonishing second of it, though, variations of which she told Rolling Stone in 1972 and Britain’s New Music Express in 1973 during a British tour. And she painted herself a Zelig of 1960s California cool. The daughter of a middle-class California family, the teenaged Sill fled family life in the early 1960s and became involved with avant-garde jazz, heroin, crime, an ill-fated marriage, reform school, and psychedelics. By the late 1960s Sill settled into the then-blossoming musical community in Los Angeles’s Topanga Canyon, and the young woman had already survived five lifetimes.

Only a few of her wide-ranging ideas appear on “Judee Sill,” yet it remains an arresting aberration of early 1970s folk rock. The country storytelling driving “The Phantom Cowboy” morphs into baroque strings during the bridge. The honky-tonk blues of “The Archetypal Man” wilts under sad violins and is then sent heavenward on a small combo of Renaissance folk. A punch of horns kicks the Randy Newman-esque piano pop of “Enchanted Sky Machines” out of its cheeky self-awareness. Sill genre-hops with the mirthful ambivalence of a child, and does so with a confidence that suggests she never second-guessed musical decisions that were emotionally honest.

These arrangement games are nothing compared to her cagey lyrics. Sill wrote lines of dense poetic imagery that feel as casual as an overheard conversation. “The Archetypal Man” is written entirely in opaque metaphor, a savior-figure shrouded in Old West music and Old Testament rhyme schemes that concludes with the Blakean couplet: “Through his veins flows a fool’s gold flood / But through the rose in his hand flows blood.”

But not even that song anticipates the songwriting alchemy Sill pulls off in “Jesus Was a Cross Maker.” A piano driven soft-pop tune carrying a song of unambiguous devotion, Sill’s lyrics follow the contemporary hymnal form of message verse and rejoicing chorus, but Sill’s Jesus “wages war with the devil / A pistol by his side,” and the chorus concludes with the bafflingly blithe “He’s a bandit and a heart breaker / Oh, but Jesus was a cross maker.” It’s a simple, declarative statement that Sill sings as if it’s the most rejoicing hallelujah ever written. And, even more miraculous, nothing about the song feels anything but sincere.

That song does not prepare the brain for the great leap forward of “Heart Food,” an album of such uncommon artistry that it’s a wonder every hip freak-folk musician on the planet doesn’t keep it on permanent repeat on an iPod. All nine songs here thread together the musical genre recombination, lyrical transcendentalism, and intoxicating mood of her debut, achieved with such seamlessness that it all feels as organic as freshly turned soil. Recorded with a wide cast of 27 musicians – including Muscle Shoals studio keyboard player Spooner Oldham, steel guitarist Buddy Gene Emmons, and workhorse session guitarist Louie Shelton – these remasters lovingly capture the wide, ambitious breadth of Sill’s production.

What clings to the brain after listening to “Heart Food” is how Sill weds gorgeous, lushly buoyant arrangements to some of the darkest, most sophisticated and misanthropic lyrics of the sunny 1970s.This is an album from a believer looking for an upside to that belief, a woman who feels that salvation of the soul means nothing without reconciling the sensuality of the flesh.

“I’ve been looking for someone / Who sells truth by the pound,” she sings in “The Pearl” over an acoustic guitar arpeggio that feels as delicate as a butterfly’s wing. The song quickly flowers into an upbeat symphonic tapestry, but Sill never wavers from her search in the lines – “Beautiful pearl, o when will you reappear? / Mysteries unfurl and become so clear / When I feel you near.” A discordant piano melody provides the mournful pulse to “When the Bridegroom Comes,” a song that looks at the second coming from the point of view of a scorned lover: “Tho’ the chosen are few, won’t you tarry your lamplight till he calls for you? / And pray that your love endure till the bridegroom comes.”

“Heart Food” captures Sill in full command of her musical gifts, which makes her disappearance from music in 1974 all the more confusing. Surely the poor performance of the album played a role, but Sill was not really interested in the marketplace game. She moved to Oregon with her partner for a time and eventually returned to the Los Angeles area, working as a music transcriber and animation illustrator before her drug overdose in 1979. “Judee Sill” and “Heart Food” alone would have elevated Judee Sill into the same cult status as Nick Drake had the albums not been out of print for nearly 30 years – or if she was as pretty as Drake. With any luck, these reissues may reaffirm the reputation of a music that three decades has yet to tarnish.