Record Review, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Beware

Artist: Bonnie "Prince" Billy
Source: Adam Lacey

I’m probably not the best choice of writer to do a Bonnie Prince Billy album review. I adore Will Oldham. I could listen to him sing for days, from his early croaky efforts as Palace Music/Palace Brothers, to his sparse, self-analysing I See A Darkness period to his more country-tinged Lie Down In The Light.

I suspect the foundations of this lie in the love of country music my parents have always harboured. They saw Johnny Cash in Dublin’s Carlton in 1974 and Don Williams in 1978, the latter while my mother was pregnant with me. They went to the Nashville rodeo in ‘76 at the National Stadium and have seen Crystal Gale support Kenny Rogers in their 80s hey-day. As I got older, through my punk phase and into grunge, my father’s tastes seemed to be more in tune with what I would most enjoy from their country collection:Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Cash, Jennings, Kristofferson. Yet I still enjoy the ground-breaking lyricism of Loretta Lynn and even the jaunty pomp of Marty Robbins (the latter when I’m drunk at Christmas.)

And so to Mr. Oldham - he straddles much of my musical tastes perfectly. He seems to have bloomed from an alternative music background; he is friends with Slint (he took the cover photo on Slint’s masterful Spiderland album) and Bill Callahan, is referenced as a legend by many in the alternative scene and cites Leonard Cohen as one of his musical heroes (two others being Merle Haggard and R. Kelly). He has not been one to waste time churning out the same material year after year and his work is as prolific as it is varied, with a plethora of guest appearances, EPs and albums seeming to flow out of his hairy fissóg every couple of months. On top of this, he has found time to be a bit-part film actor appearing in the wonderful Old Joy, Junebug and, recently, Wendy and Lucy.

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