Collaborating with Faun Fables sweetheart, Dawn McCarthy, Will Oldham’s latest project under his ‘Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’ moniker may prompt you to recall the bittersweet partnership offered by Emmylou Harris and Gram Parson on the latter’s ‘Grievous Angel’ LP. But then again, it may prompt nothing of the sort; it depends on whether you’ve heard of any of them – which is indeed less likely than we’d care to admit. Why haven’t we heard of them? Well probably for the same reason that you’ve not heard of M. Ward, Grant Lee Philips, Bill Callahan, or James Yorkston – all of which offer varying degrees of similitude to this. And the common thread? They’re all ostensibly alt-country or new-folk, one way or the other unless you’re really being pedantic. No I’m not talking about the quasi-country indie pop of Ryan Adams or the slick, twangy traditionalism of Steve Earle, I’m talking about that skewed, rankled, occasionally surreal and unorthodox stuff you usually get smoking from the same gun as ‘Cosmic American Music’ (whatever that is). Lambchop are a better example. Weird acoustic shit. Gentle on the ear but likelier than most to take a basic firearm into a school and demonstrate how tragically misunderstood they are in front of a dozen or so anxious children. Something a little more neurotic and unkempt that your average country-bumpkin. Something a little more hair-trigger. And more plaid. In fact, if we’re really going to town on analogies, think of something soft and cuddly soaked in kerosene. Think of lint. Soft, supple, flexible, comforting yet bloodied and wretched all at the same time. Think of a punch-drunk boxer picking an acoustic guitar, sat on the porch of a rickety plantation house in Mississippi, a Walt Whitman anthology and a picture by Frida Kahlo sat alongside a half-bottle of liquor and the chords to Springsteen’s ‘The River’ propped open in front of him. He wears a jumper. He dreams of drowning. And he sings the sweetest of melancholies with a voice as dry and as gravelly as something you’d pick up in a hardware shop. Cursed and blessed in equal measures. And he’s sucking a mint (but this is minor).
Why ‘Bonnie Prince Billy’? Well it’s something along the lines of Bonnie Prince Charlie, Billy The Kid (also known as Williiam Bonney), Nat ‘King’ Cole and probably Old ‘King’ Cole for that matter. Oldham is trying to say something with his moniker and it could be this; there’s a silky smooth old-fashioned crooner with an outlaw heart, exiled in the remotest of wildernesses with only a crown of thorns to show for his kingly status. And he’s interested in bushes, seeds, harsh winter winds and curling up and dying. At least he is on ‘The Letting Go’, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s follow-up to ‘Master and Everyone’ and his fourth album to date.
Recorded at the Greenhouse studio in Reykjavik with a number of Icelandic string players at his side, ‘The Letting Go’ creeps through a dozen or so beautiful but intense vignettes, barely rising beyond the idle purr of Oldham’s guitar, some cumulus violins and the paradiddling of a snare. It’s soft, it’s modest and features the haunting, birdlike trill of Dawn McCarthy’s crackling, fireside harmonies. ‘Love Comes To Me’, ‘Cursed Sleep’, ‘No Bad News’, ‘Big Friday’, and standout track, ‘The The Letting Go’ provide the sherried, oak casket, whilst the malt is provided by the more curious, Sigur Ros inspired ‘Gods Small Song’.
More serious and reflective than some of Oldham’s work to date, but no less absorbing.