Best Will Oldham/Bonnie Prince Billy/Palace Bros

[sisyphus]

(I decided I'd cut it off at 25, things like The Amalgamated Sons of Rest and The Anomoanon are too far on the periphery..)

(I have not listened to There is No-One What Will Take Care of You really, although I did have it at one point......no excuse.. and I'm way too high to think right now.)

[sisyphus]

I had to vote for Ease Down the Road even though I See a Darkness and Master and Everyone both come really close. Maybe it just depends on the day. The Letting Go comes really close too. Will Oldham is simply the best.

[sisyphus]

Has anyone seen Slitch, or listened to the soundtrack by David Pajo and Will Oldham? Wondering if it's a worthwhile purchase one of these days....

[Fuzznuts]

I votedd for There is No-One. It's lovely.

[sisyphus]

You like There is No-One What Will Take Care of You? I really need to dig that one up and listen to it, cuz of all his albums, that's the one I've heard least. I need to get on board with all his sweet brothers.

[skvorisdeadsorta]

Here's my list:
Palace Brothers: Arise Therefore
Will Oldham: Joya
Bonnie Prince Billy: I See A Darkness.

[Fuzznuts]

sisyphus said:

You like There is No-One What Will Take Care of You? I really need to dig that one up and listen to it, cuz of all his albums, that's the one I've heard least. I need to get on board with all his sweet brothers.

Yeah, it's the gut-wrenchingest.

[Thorngrub]

To me, it's hard to choose between

SEAFARER'S MUSIC (my personal favorite music of his, but alas, no bonnie vocals :,c)
VIVA LAST BLUES
ARISE, THEREFORE
MASTER & EVERYONE
I SEE A DARKNESS


In the end. . . I just had to give it to I See A Darkness

[sisyphus]

fuzznuts said:

sisyphus said:

You like There is No-One What Will Take Care of You? I really need to dig that one up and listen to it, cuz of all his albums, that's the one I've heard least. I need to get on board with all his sweet brothers.

Yeah, it's the gut-wrenchingest.

i'll have to spend some time with it soon.

[strawman]

I only have "I see a darkness", so I can't compare?

[JesusLooksLikeMe]

I See A Darkness. There aren't enough superlatives. Actually, that's a recurring problem with all great art. We should colonise space and find some more. Is there a suggestion scheme around here?

[sisyphus]

you're right, JLLM. I See A Darkness is his best album. i voted for Ease Down the Road because for some silly reason i was trying to evade this fact, almost as if i have _{*shakes head in rosy embarassment*} succumbed to that fucked up 'it's-too-popular-so-it's-time-to-knock-it-down-a-notch' tendancy.

still, though, Ease Down the Road has a few tracks that could have easily slid in alongside most of the tracks on I See A Darkness and not been too out of place, considering how "drenched in duende" they are; namely "Sheep," and "Grand Dark Feeling Of Emptiness."

I See A Darkness is his most powerful and perfectly crafted, though. it's just difficult, cuz he's so damn prolific, but there are a handful that glow out extra shiny sting fraught soul taut.

for sweetness, Superwolf and Master and Everyone win hands down.

for mellow coolness, Viva Last Blues probably takes first.

for existential broodiness, poetic melting of language into the pre-lingual dream psychology of little children and primitive mankind, juxtoposition of the holy and profane, and just sheer depth, Ease Down the Road, I See A Darkness, Joya, and The Letting Go seem to come out on top.

actually, now that i think about it, The Letting Go is a good combination of the bitter and the sweet. "No Bad News" is quite a piece... so enigmatic and ambiguous, yet familiar and poignant and painful and beautiful... I guess you could say that about quite a bit of Oldham's work... It's bulk is so ominous, yet it's conclusion (almost an aside) is so hopeful. "Lay and Love" is probably my favorite... I love it's subtlety and wisdom. I love the way the early lyrics "From what I’ve seen you’re magnificent / You fight evil with all you do / Your every act is spectacular / It makes me lay here and love you" contrast with the later lyrics that go "From what I know you're terrified / You have a mistrust running through you / Your smile is hiding something hurtful / It makes me lay here and love you." I love the way Dawn McCarthy's eerie eastern voice and Jim White's folky plodding matter-of-fact drums compliment it, too.

I wish I could host a trip to the spiral jetty for Will Oldham in Nov. or Dec.

[sisyphus]

strawman said:

I only have "I see a darkness", so I can't compare?

as soon as thorny gets a lappy with a functioning cd burner, i'll send you more if you want.

here's a good review:

Will Oldham, over the course of the last 14 years, has managed to evoke any number of complex emotions and moods. His early recordings had the manic chord of the back-woods nutcase, mixing sin and punishment, the holy and the profane. More recent releases see him dealing with commitment, love, and, uh, plenty more sin. The central themes of his music are consistent: desire, sex, death, darkness, violence, and, occasionally, hope. The Letting Go, Oldham’s fourth proper LP under the ‘Prince’ Billy moniker (not counting a slew of collaborations, compilations, and one-off projects) isn’t necessarily his most focused record (that’d be Master and Everyone [2003]), but it captures a sort of emotionally tortured state that seems to be present in his best work. This is an album about pain and the release that comes after, and the music captures this. It also finds him doing something entirely unusual: getting personal.

This is private music, but it’s also, paradoxically, one of Oldham’s more collaborative albums. Jim White and Paul Oldham both add important elements, and the production, courtesy of Valgeir Sigurdsson, is the best of Oldham’s career. The most immediately striking contribution, though, is from Dawn McCarthy of Faun Fables, who appears on nearly every song here and even wrote her lyrics for the title track. Her voice is gorgeous, and Sigurdsson treats her vocals lovingly, matching them perfectly to Oldham’s quiet growl. Of course, that growl has grown, too, as his vocals on “Love Comes to Me” prove from the outset.

That first song sets the mood for the album. Oldham opens with the gruesome stanza, “When the numbers get so high / Of the dead flying through the sky / Oh I don’t know why / Love comes to me.” (insert sisy: i love where the slow drumming begins to build in here...) The music, a wash of quiet strings and subtle percussion, adds an additional disconnect. The next four tracks, including the brilliant “Cursed Sleep” (read my thoughts here) and the equally good “Strange Form of Life” allow Oldham to play around with the possibilities that this sort of orchestration and production allow his songwriting.

Of course, uncomfortable with any one style, Oldham begins stripping away layers and minimizing the songs, starting with the old-fashioned “Cold & Wet,” an odd choice for second single but nonetheless a good song. The beautiful “Big Friday” harkens back to the best of Oldham’s imagery-laden, naturalistic Palace-era work, but again, with a sheen that his ‘90s material never had. “Lay and Love,” on the other hand, lets Jim White go nuts on the drum settings, and both Oldham and McCarthy sound unbelievable on the love-struck opening verse of, “From what I’ve seen you’re magnificent / You fight evil with all you do / Your every act is spectacular / It makes me lay here and love you.” The album’s final section draws the album in tighter and tighter. “The Seedling” is positively hostile, while the title track and “God’s Small Song” are all regret and loss. Oldham closes the record with “I Called You Back,” one of the most simple, beautiful songs he has ever written. The untitled addendum track bears little comment.

The Letting Go is a long album -- Oldham’s longest, by my count -- and can be a little dense. It’s nowhere near as inviting as his previous works, even with the excellent production and introduction of strings. But give it a few weeks; it’ll grow. There’s a clear logic and flow to the disc which certainly helps it along, but largely it’s due to the feeling that Oldham really means it. Prior to The Letting Go, one might’ve expected a few joke tracks or at least something bat-shit crazy, but there’s none of that here. Perhaps he worked it out of his system earlier this year with the Tortoise collaboration, or perhaps he’s really just that serious about these songs. I’d argue that he is. Perhaps the best case for this is in the album’s title itself, taken from the Emily Dickinson poem After a Great Pain, A Formal Feeling Comes. The final stanza of the poem reads,

This is the hour of lead
Remembered if outlived,
As freezing persons recollect the snow--
First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.

Peter Hepburn
September 22, 2006

www.cokemachineglow.com/reviews/bpb_thelettinggo2006.html

peter hepburn's own aside:

Bonnie "Prince" Billy: “Cursed Sleep"
> from Then the Letting Go (Drag City; 2006)

With Will Oldham I’m always curious to see what comes next, though never without a certain apprehension. Is he ready to settle down and pull out another classic, or is it gonna be jokey rehashings, sex jokes, and “weird-as-shit covers.” The latter are alright every now and again, but when you come right down to it I’d still take a Viva Last Blues or I See a Darkness any day. That’s my thinking when I got Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s “Cursed Sleep” single in the mail a few weeks back.

And then in one single, five-and-a-half minute shot, Oldham once again ups the ante. I’ve had the song in heavy rotation for the last two weeks, looking for a flaw. Somewhere in there something must be askew, just slightly off. But it isn’t; it’s just that fucking good.

Jim White and Paul Oldham keep the rhythm section chugging along slowly. Emmett Kelly’s searing guitar lines makes a perfect counterpoint to Ryder McNair’s perfect, soulful string section. Still, though, it’s the matching of Oldham and Dawn McCarthy (of Faun Fables, and sounding for all the world like an even-more-sultry Chan Marshall) that makes this song absolutely explode. I have a hard time coming up with a comparison in Oldham’s vast back catalogue, other than to say that it incorporates, and builds upon, nearly all the best elements that Oldham has worked with. The strings are better, the guitar lines rival even his work last year with Matt Sweeney, and his voice is the best it’s ever sounded. If this

[sisyphus]

Here's a good one:

A point is reached, in considering Will Oldham, when splitting his personality, his sun-kissed/heaven-bred music and his spirit as it is rightly or wrongly perceived to be, off into their different abbreviations and counter descriptions feels like filthy, filthy slander. He cannot and should not be taken asunder or reduced into words, though he does incredible things with them on his own time. He can’t be recognized as anything but a direct connection to the polar ice caps, the toasting campfire, the whistling wind, the lofting plumes of smoke from a chimney, the expanse of the sky, your loved ones, his loved ones, the dead, the living, the burn of the tropics and the hum of a silence. Of course, you’re thinking, ‘Why stop there?’ There are an unlimited number of answers to a question phrased, “What is Will Oldham to you?” When you stay away from asking, “Who is Will Oldham?” you avoid running into definite answers and facts that have a fleet of reasoning behind them—things that have to be agreed upon, for there can be no dispute, just nodding and shrugs. But asking what he is invites an exercise that can actually spare us of derivative, categorical referencing and cold, hardness. Oldham, also known as Bonnie Prince Billy, from all rational indications, can be assumed to be at least 90-percent mystique and 10-percent reality. It’s a daring move to take a position claiming that the greater portion of a man is so unquestionably human he’s inhuman, thereby making him mystical. Of all American songwriters born in the last 50 years, Oldham poses himself as the exception to the most rules and is a denizen of a world that few others even know about, a place where the wilds are tamed – or at least observed naturally – and brought from behind the curtain, still shaking and damp, not used to the exposure. Out into the open air, the rawness of the emotions that Oldham brings to the forefront of his songs, is breathtaking.
Every way you cut into one of Oldham’s many songs – including the new nourishment he unveils at the end of this month on the Drag City album “The Letting Go” – the slice will tick into an undiluted example of radiance. He brings you closer to the source than most and lets you peer over the side. Sometimes he even lets you get down on your hands and knees to feel warmth spilling from that which he is mourning or pinning an exact face onto, just to capture it as tellingly as possible, for posterity. He insulates these songs with so many aches that when he sings them they sounds like natural light and nothing worth fretting over. If anything, he makes it possible to see things for their exactness and with that comes a recognition of the particular order that everything holds, good or bad. A sorrowful situation, taken as it lies, is plenty magnificent when recounted with the appropriate words and a deftness of heart. Oldham makes suffering sweet and I’m guessing that there are thousands of people – right now – who can and are scrolling through their heads the song of his that they’d like to have played at their funeral service. What could feel more natural than hearing his melancholic scruffiness sing about the splendors of love or a last goodbye between friends as you are being mourned? It would, in some way, be comforting to know that he was there in voice, creating some sobs and then easing the tears away. He has a way of rocking you (in the sense of what a chair does, not in the sense of what the Foo Fighters do) that expunges all concept of a higher power because somehow it feels right there already and that then makes it not so high.
Oldham has a reputation for being prickly at times, shunning most ways that a person can get notorious. He lives for his creations and whatever else that might mean. He’s uncompromisingly serious about his art and with that comes respect from those who choose to take in and linger his spells – the many, many albums that could fuel thousands upon thousands of bottomless conversations and circuitous discussions. He loves his Madonna. He loves his Nelly Furtado. (How could I make this up?) And he loves what he does for the sake of himself and for the sake of others. As he says below, in the greatest self-explanation of purpose that any artist could ever give, “Words and works exchanged make life almost too fucking sweet sometimes.”

www.daytrotter.com/article/237/bonnie-prince-billy-so-unquestionably-human-that-hes-inhuman-thereby-making-him-mystical-and-perfect-for-every-one-of-our-funeral-services

[luke]

Does he have any albums that won't put me to sleep? 'Cause so far I haven't heard one.

I'm being serious, too. I listen to music mostly in my vehicle, and the likes of I See A Darkness and There Is No-One nearly make me run off the road.