While considered a sort of musical JD Salinger in certain circles, Bill Fox has largely dwelled in obscurity for most of his musical career. This is due in no small part to his reclusive ways and tendency to drop off the radar at opportune moments. Fox first gained recognition for fronting ‘80s Cleveland power-pop band The Mice, whose “Not Proud of the USA” remains a personal anthem in these fucked-up times. The band had begun making headway after releasing a couple of records, but he notoriously broke up the band on the morning they were set to embark on a European tour. (The story I’ve always heard is that they were at the airport and he went to “get cigarettes” and never returned.) He re-emerged in the ‘90s with a pair of solo albums, Shelter from the Smoke and Transit Byzantium, filled with songs of aching lyrical poignancy and pop-inflected folk recorded primarily on four-track. The records were lavished with praise by those who heard them and even caught the ear of Sire founder Seymour Stein, but just as his career seemed to be taking off again, albeit ever so modestly, Fox once again disappeared into the Ohio aether.

To most fans’ surprise, Fox resurfaced once again in 2012 with One Thought Revealed, an album that showed his songwriting spark hadn’t dimmed in the slightest in the intervening years and even saw him stepping slightly away from the stripped-down approach of past records. Fox even began playing some shows around Ohio. (He also agreed to an interview around this time, but true to form, he never answered the phone at our agreed-upon time nor returned any of my follow-up emails.)

Fox has been mostly silent in recent years, but he’s peeled back the curtain once again with a new collection, Resonance (Eleventh Hour Recording Company), with about half of the record culled from material recorded on four-track during the ’90s and the other half being more recent recordings of greater fidelity.

Leadoff track “Terminal Way” sits with Fox’s best work. Set to a Dylanesque mix of acoustic guitar and harmonica, Fox tells of trying to rid himself of an old lover he knows is no good for him, singing, “Get away, get away… I love you in a terminal way.” Perhaps even more moving, though, is “Meat Factory.” With a similar mix of finger-picked guitar and harmonica, Fox paints a vividly despondent picture of working the worst kind of dead-end job that resonates with a misery that extends beyond its subject matter. Meanwhile, on “Lift Your Heads,” Fox’s guitar is paired with violin while he sings the pensively optimistic refrain of the title, creating something that seems particularly delicate in its beauty. Fox also shows himself still capable of the exquisite pop song on “Got Her on My Mind.” Recorded with a full band, he crafts the perfect mix of infectious melody and melancholy lyricism. Like all of Fox’s sporadic releases over the years, this one shows that each of these fleeting glimpses of his innate talent is to be treasured.