When Girls kicks its off its penultimate season on HBO next month, the first episode will feature a song counterintuitively called “No The End Is Not Near” from Benny Hester’s 1972 album Benny… It’s one of many singer-songwriter psych-pop gems on the album, none of which have been available until now.

Hester, who later became a relatively well-known contemporary Christian musician and a producer of the SNICK TV series Roundhouse, was an upstart Las Vegas musician at the time. Working with future Grammy-winner Brent Maher, he tracked his debut album Benny… with Elvis Presley’s TCB Band plus Larry Muhoberac and Joe Osborn. It’s a hell of an album, but thanks to a fire at the recording studio that destroyed the masters and most of the inventory, it never saw release. Moraine Music Group is rectifying that injustice all these years later, which you’ll truly appreciate once you hear “The End Is Not Near” below.

Tracklist:
01 “Give Your Love Forever”
02 “No The End Is Not Near”
03 “Love Never Dies”
04 “The Bridge”
05 “We All Know He’s Comin'”
06 “The Painter”
07 “Malcombe”
08 “What’s Happened To My Friends”
09 “Please Let This Be So”
10 “Genevieve”

Benny… is out 2/19 via Moraine Music Group. Pre-order it here.

CREDIT: Gary Heery