Bill Callahan & Bonnie Prince Billy – Blind Date Party – Album Review

Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com 

 

Matt Sweeney and Bonnie Prince Billy – Superwolves – Album Review

 Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com 

Bonnie Prince Billy - Lie Down In The Light

For Lie Down In The Light, released in 2008, Will Oldham appeared to have loosened up considerably.   It opens with the jaunty, countrified strum Easy Does It.  The album is hardly party central though.  You Remind Me of Something is more typical Bonnie Prince Billy, a dark, folky tune featuring fiddle with a nice backing vocal from Ashley Webber.  The songs here are generally of high quality, So Everyone is a fine duet between Webber and Oldham, and the gently picked guitars of Missing One make it an undoubted highlight.  A little quirky instrumentation can lift a seemingly run of the mill track to greater heights, the clarinet solo in For Every Field There's a Mole is a case in point.  Country influences cone to bear on the laidback duet What's Missing Is and the gentle steel guitar in the background of the electrified Where Is The Puzzle?

But it's not till late into the album that the strongest material appears.  The title track harks back to the simple, skeletal folk of 2003's Master and Everyone, with the piano part in particular acting like a welcome blast of chill air.  Willow Trees Bend crawls along charmingly at a snail's pace, gorgeous sighing guitars seemingly taking an age to not really get anywhere.

So not quite a standout Bonnie Prince Billy album, merely a pretty good one.

Bonnie Prince Billy – Wolf of the Cosmos – Album Review

Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com

https://nomoreworkhorse.com/2017/11/28/bonnie-prince-billy-wolf-of-the-cosmos-album-review/

Bonnie Prince Billy - The Letting Go

The Letting Go, released in 2006 is perhaps the lushest album in Will Oldham's career.  Recorded in Iceland, it features sweeping melodies and sumptuous strings, not something you'd usually associate with him.  The strings that open the album on Love Comes To Me threaten to be overpowering on what is (on the surface) a relatively 'sweet' song, but Dawn McCarthy's high-pitched backing vocals and Emmett Kelly's guitar keep things on an even keel.  Indeed Kelly's guitar is what really lifts the following track Strange Form of Life from being just another run-of-the-mill Bonnie Prince Billy track, with some really fine, clean guitar licks.  Wai appears to be a return to the austere folk of Master and Everyone.

The centrepiece is undoubtedly the five and a half minute Cursed Sleep, with a guitar figure and string arrangement that is highly evocative of Nick Drake's Bryter Layter.  It's definitely the track on the album that showcases Nico Muhly's string arrangements to the greatest effect, but it's not a particularly relaxed track, more an exercise in building tension.  No Bad News is more stately folk, with gently plucked guitars, muted drums and a low undercurrent of strings.  After this the album does a complete about turn with Cold & Wet, a slice of throwaway blues.  Later into the album, almost title track Then The Letting Go is a highlight, chiefly due to McCarthy's exquisite, almost 'Call of the Wild' backing vocals and wintry, picked guitars and lyrics.  God's Small Song, is more impressionistic, a bit like something label-mate Bill Callahan might do in his looser moments.

A fairly atypical Bonnie Prince Billy album, but a pretty strong one.

Matt Sweeney and Bonnie Prince Billy - Superwolf

For this album, released in 2005, Bonnie Prince Billy teamed up with Matt Sweeney, who had recorded with Zwan.  The results are among the fullest sounding, and most musical produced by Oldham.  My Home Is The Sea is a kind of rollicking, rock song, lurching back and forth across riffs.  It's followed up by the gentle, melodic, shimmering Beast for Thee, then more moody guitars introduce What Are You?.  This latter track contains lyrics with 'ear-grabbing' lines like "to take you over my knee and spank you mercilessly", sung so sweetly by Oldham and Sweeney you end up doing a WTF, a kind of double-take.  It's a hugely tuneful and melodic opening three songs.

After this the quiet lulls and crashing guitars of Goat and Ram move the album in another direction momentarily.  The musicianship on this album is a joy, Lift Us Up features a terrific guitar solo, while the harmonies on Rudy Foolish, unlike Oldham's work as Palace, are almost wilfully in tune.  Only Someone Running is more rustic, featuring country fingerpicking, with some jaunty whistling thrown in.

Towards the end, Blood Embrace, the penultimate track on the album is something of a centrepiece.  At nearly eight minutes long, its creeping, tension-building guitar figure gently unfurls in a manner evoking Neil Young's Down by the River.  The album finishes with the blues-folk of I Gave You.

Highly recommended for anyone curious about Will Oldham, definitely one of the more 'musical' albums he's been involved with.

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Ease Down The Road

Will Oldham released this album in 2001.  It's considerably more 'musical' than any of his previous albums.  It opens with May It Always Be which features a muted electric guitar, piano and Oldham actually singing 'properly', before a full on guitar solo midway through the song.  Many of the songs on the album are catchy and feature tunes you can really sing along to, such as the trio of Just To See My Holly Home, At The Break of Day and After I Made Love To You.  

A King At Night has a pleading, plaintive yet muted quality to it, a sweet tune distracting from lyrics concerned with "going down on me".  It's an incredibly melodic album in comparison with anything which came before.  The title track is an amiable shuffle, with the just the 'right' amount of each instrument, even the banjo doesn't overshadow anything.  Languid tunes such as Lion Lair and the country-tinged Mrs. William are the order of the day, making the album a great listen.  Grand Dark Feeling of Emptiness and Rich Wife Full of Happiness are bluesier, a bit like a very sparse Nick Cave.  In fact, not a bad place to start with Will Oldham.

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – Best Troubador – Album Review

Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com

https://nomoreworkhorse.com/2017/05/03/bonnie-prince-billy-best-troubador-album-review/

Album Review: Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – I See A Darkness

This was Will Oldham’s first album recorded under the name of Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy in 1999.  It kicks off with the singalong A Minor Place which features weedy organ in the background.  Better is follow up track Nomadic Revery (All Around), with gloriously undisciplined vocals where Oldham sounds like a 90 year old man.  The playing across these and other tracks is subtle and spare, nothing is too overdone.

The title track is the centerpiece, it’s a kind of a quiet, brooding, creeping song (covered a year later by Johnny Cash), and probably the most ‘backwoodsy’, quintessentially Oldham song.  Much of the material is quite dark, as evidenced by the titles – Another Day Full of Dread, Death to Everyone, Today I Was An Evil One, and the Appalachian folk-style Black – yet most have the melodies are highly memorable.

It’s not all downbeat, Madeleine-Mary rollicks along with a loping beat and the aforementioned Today I Was An Evil One is relatively sprightly.  This album is the one by which all Oldham’s future works have been judged, and as such, is a little overrated.  He was, however, doing that ‘log cabin’ thing years before Bon Iver brought it to the masses, and this album is a good example of this.

Album Review: Bonnie Prince Billy – Master and Everyone

The many-monikered Will Oldham’s 2003 album is one of his sparsest works, mainly consisting of skeletal folk, mainly Oldham’s voice and guitar.

Opening track The Way has a simple, wintry Nick Drake style melody and chorus imploring “love me the way I love you”, with a cello part which carries the song. Little else deviates from this template of gloriously depressed folk. With close up mics, you can here Oldham’s fingers sliding from fret to fret. There are some fine melodies here, especially Joy and Jubilee (where Oldham sounds anything but joyous) where he self-harmonises to great effect.

The proceedings are broken up with some backing vocals from Marty Slayton on several tracks (Ain’t You Wealthy, Ain’t You Wise?, Lessons From What’s Poor), but it’s very much a single-minded vision, with a consistent sound throughout. No superfluous notes are played here, every note has its place.

The hesitant, foreboding Even If Love evokes a dark night in the woods, while the coda of Hard Life rounds things off with some uplifting clean, electric guitar. For those who like their music austere and barely adorned, this is for you.