Sparkles in the sweat, diamonds in the dust, gold in the grit; service as usual from the Louisiana heir apparent, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy.

FLAWS POLISHED

With his last outing, The Purple Bird, it was loudly heralded that it was to be a further Nashville helmed concoction, as in taking all advantage of the scene and sessions available in Music City, USA, with the outcome promising more polish about the singer’s more often ragged edges. And it was, and jolly good too. So you might expect this a return to a rawer template, with scuffier boots and scruffier facial hair. But you’d be wrong, even if that sort of shoe gets referenced in (Everybody’s Got A) Friend Named Joe.

OK, it isn’t exactly slick from Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, but some aspects have been crafted with so much care and love as to look past any patched dungarees. This is largely down to the lavish arrangements, which suggest this is a detail that Oldham, and co-producer, Jim Marlowe, have thought hard about. This is lavish as in hiring a bevy of string players, some mariachi brass and a veritable congregation of additional and backing singers. These are textures sometimes applied to patch deficiencies of voice or material, but this too could not be further from the case. These songs are crafted as charmingly as any the writer has written before, and, if he is no Caruso, he has long learnt to maximise the cast of his frail and tremulous tenor. Indeed, the extra voices enhance those aspects, rather than detract, something many similarly fractured voices could take note of.

MELLIFLUOUS & MEANDERING

A bow drawn slowly across a double bass is the first sound you hear, before a guitar tinkles into life. Some warm saxophone mutters softly over a wash of strings and Will Oldham, aka B’P’B, starts to sing. This is Why Is The Lion, the title expanding no further on that point, and it sounds more lullaby than roar. A mellifluous and meandering melody, it is as gentle as a lamb and utterly engaging. What sounds like uillean pipes is more likely clarinet, possibly more saxophone. Flute is in there, too, credited to Nuala Kennedy. So, why is the lion, and it seems the big cat is more a metaphor for the devil at (any of) our doors. I can sort of think of one.

They Keep Trying To Find You starts with just strum and voice, a delicate narrative around isolation into self against the outside world, which is actually a warning against so doing: “in fact, nobody’s friend has nothing inside“. A wispy lament of a song, it is icily beautiful, the words chilling. I can’t stop playing it and thinking on it. As each verse concludes, a harmony vocal, from Oldham’s brother, Ned, joins and a string quartet soar. The string arrangements are all by Ryder McNair, himself a cousin of the family.

The strings get left behind for Strange Trouble, with just guitar, voices and piano, and has some additional guest female vocals, from Maggie Halfman, that weave and wind around his voice, rather than mirror exactly, that divide working well. “Change tastes like trouble, and trouble tastes like change“. This is as confident an opening triad as you will hear all year.

GET A JOE

Life Is Scary Horses may just hold a distant memory, depending on your listening habits. If you are a fan of the Mekons, something that Oldham himself is, it may become clear, not least as the voice of erstwhile and occasional Mekon, Sally Timms, joins the fray. That distant memory is Timms’ own song, Horses, a song Oldham has actually previously covered more closely. This is more “inspired by”, let’s say, but has further glossy tranches of strings, curling around the melody line. Electric guitar bends in the background breeze, and some bass bobs unobtrusively to add further ballast. Shortly after Timms lends her tones, a whistle toots out a celebratory reel, over some Tex-Mex brassy honks. It sounds ungainly. It isn’t.

(Everybody’s Got A) Friend Named Joe set me thinking, with a quick straw poll suggesting some truth in the assertion. It has a feel of being from the perspective of the individual addressed in They Keep Trying To Find You, as the “nobody” responds to that friend named Joe. Lush once more with the string quintet, other embellishment comes from a ripple of bouzouki and a returning Halfman. A Moog hums some warm basement notes. If you haven’t a Joe, get one. A 1,2,3,4 and some wonky brass acts then as a clarion call to the You Are My Sunshine adjacent Vietnam Sunshine, with tuba huffing and puffing beneath the faux-ceremonial mariarchaicisms. It is marginally bonkers in the kitchen sink of competing ideas, but gets way with it, if barely.

KITSCHY SYNC?

Hey Little reprises the lullaby mood of the opener, as insistent fiddle riffs vie with smoother sweeps. In what is otherwise like an orchestrated nursery rhyme, it is now the leerier wail of Freakwater’s Catherine Irwin that jousts with Oldham, before a dreamy sax solo ushers in bygone ages. Kitchen sink, as above, or kitschy sync? Who cares, it works. If some can hear echoes of Neil Young in Oldham’s shaky warble, I never have, always finding him a far frailer spirit. So it is a surprise that it is exactly the Canadian Harvest Moon hitmaker that comes to mind for Davey Dead.

As much as anything, it shows now what control Oldham can muster for his delivery, irrespective of where you place the bar for Ol’ Neil’s quaver. Having said, I’m uncertain harp, here from Erin Hill, has featured ever much in his CV, this being all over this reticent little beauty. Like little much else in Oldham’s canon, the little flourishes of clarinet and the whistling, the put your lips together and blow sort, gild the lily still further.

PLAINTIVE DUET DELIVERY

Next, and with a title like The Children Are Sick, it sounds a real downer. I suppose it is, but the plaintive duet delivery of Oldham and Halfman gives it a redeeming quality of hope. Is it again addressed at Joe, I wonder: “We’ll give you such treasure when everything’s through, it’s fine to have friends as devoted as you“. The starkest arrangement yet, it is a sole guitar, with the two voices and then, as it closes, more. With Bride Of The Lion closing the disc, it is a direct follow on to the similarly themed opener, if now a more philosophical and rueful acceptance of fatality.

As with the companion song, the vocal trio, Tory Fisher, Lacey Guthrie and Katie Peabody, together as Duchess, add a vocal chorus, for this more dynamic reprise, with scrubs of electric guitar replacing the sinewy strings. “Broken and bleeding, bruised and accosted“, the expressed hope of winning carries a conviction that overbears the odds. Which is a good thought to cherish, as the set comes to a close.

NO RIGHT TO BE THIS GOOD

This record has no right to be this good. As in, someone as prodigiously productive as Oldham shouldn’t be able to maintain this level of quality control. But, as with all the other paradoxes presented here, he has and it is. The supporting cast is superb, with, where otherwise unmentioned, it being his core band of Jacob Duncan and Thomas Deakin, who do most the heavy lifting across an array of instruments, with Chris Copp adding occasional bass, Eamonn O’Leary the bouzouki and Chris Leidner the barely used drums, which flicker into life only sporadically.

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy: Website

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