Pop: This Week's Album Releases
Andy Gill
* 01/22/99
The Independent - London
(Copyright 1999 Newspaper Publishing PLC)
Bonnie Prince Billy
I See A Darkness
Domino
WILL OLDHAM'S whimsical penchant for changing his name with each
successive release (Palace Brothers, Palace Music, Palace, even Will
Oldham) has already resulted in the Belfast leg of his tour being
cancelled, no local promoter having the courage - or the suicidal
stupidity - to advertise a show by Bonnie Prince Billy.
You have to say it's their loss: I See A Darkness is Oldham's most
beguiling release yet, a marvellous album which endows his
characteristic melancholy with an uplifting, epiphanic grace.
Oldham's compositions are exquisitely-wrought pieces whose manner
is always in perfect accord with their form - which here shifts more
than ever towards traditional folksong. "A Minor Place" has the
comfy quality of rhymes that have been around forever and a day. And
though "Nomadic Revery (All Around)" builds to a rousing,
storm-tossed, gospel-shanty climax suggestive of derangement, the
peculiar, convoluted shifts of tense in Oldham's verses have clearly
been crafted like complex marquetry, syllables and shades of meaning
slotting seamlessly together beneath the surface commotion.
The album's real power, however, lies in the way Oldham makes it
all seem so natural, the way his frail, fleeting delivery and
weatherbeaten arrangements add a convincing patina of antiquity to
these songs. They're not the musical equivalent of repro furniture,
nor do they sound like retouched roots-music exercises - they really
do have the authentic feel of songs that have been smoothed to
perfection over centuries, like well- whittled sticks, or folk
memories passed on at a mother's breast. The first essential album
of the year.
VARIOUS ARTISTS
New Highway
Abokadisc/Direct
THIS COMPILATION of American neo-roots music follows in the dusty
footsteps of last year's Loose and Viva Americana anthologies, but
suffers from diminishing returns; this may be the most fertile strain
of American rock, but there's clearly a limit on quality. The album
takes its title from Dave Alvin's modern hobo blues, but too many
artists either veer off down the wrong highway (the prog-rock self-
regard of Neal Casal's "Twilight of the Floods"), or settle for
* routine covers of old folk-rock chestnuts such as "Whiskey in the
Jar" and "Washed My Hands in Muddy Waters". But there's
compensation in the rough, rodeo exhilaration of Slobberbone's
"Engine Joe", a tale of a natural mechanic reduced to flipping
burgers, and Nadine's "Closer", plumbing the deeper, darker environs
of sadcore. Cajun influences creep in with Billy Swan's rollicking
version of "Mystery Train" and the loneliness of the long-distance
performer is best evoked by Kevin Welch's "5 Million 1 Thousand
Miles", a lived-in voice conveying a life that's barely living at
all
