BONNIE “PRINCE” BILLY

Master & everyone

LP/CD, Domino

“Love me, the way I love you” sings Will Oldham in his fragile voice right at the beginning, and you constantly want to hug him. His musical journey has brought him a long way, now embracing Nick Drake in all his subdued might and subtle power. Another silent and beautiful record about love, and all the pains and joys involved with love. I cannot believe there is a soul out there, turned so cold and hard that it will not be enlightend by this record.

Please, don’t make the mistake to listen to this record other than wholeheartedly. Don’t let it run in the background, dive into it with all your ears, heart and mind. I am not sure if Will Oldham has ever made a record as silent, introverted and beautiful as this one. The music is so understated and shy it almost seems to hide in the record itself. So you have to make it come out, you have to tease it with nice and positive feelings, try to shield it from harm and unpleasant experiences, just like you would do to make a little rabbit come out of its hiding. But if you manage to do so, you will be rewarded with more than just beautiful music, but with deep insights into the whole human existence. Or at least, human existence as seen by Will Oldham himself. About how love is the most important thing of all, how man should be servant to all and servant to none, how we live as wolves amongst wolves. And if you do so, with the fifth song on “master and everyone” you will fall into the chorus and hum along “joy & jubilee” because life, after all, is beautiful.

Yes, it is true. Hidden within all these sad, very sad songs about lost love, losing love and the inability to love, are the most euphoric moments of beauty and joy. The Portuguese call it “duende”, I guess, which means the portion of loss and pain every love-song has to contain, to really become a beautiful love-song. Of course, to make this happen, a song or a collection of song needs time and place to evolve, to breathe, to slowly grow into a form mirroring life itself.¹ But patience and giving space are rare attributes or possibilities in our time, in which everything has to go as fast as possible, as efficient as possible and as productive as possible. That is why our time has no beauty and love anymore, and that is why Will Oldham is such an outsider.

Even among those artists, constantly working on this vision of the love-song (such as Nick Cave, PJ Harvey – who “even if love” is dedicated to - The Tindersticks, almost every alt-country-act one way or another, and oh so many others) Will Oldham has chosen an outsider-position. He casts himself in mysteries, enhances the air of a weird, almost crazy genius, follows his path without looking over his shoulder or checking his accounts. He has no inhibitions to print the lyrics to the song “master and everyone” onto the inner sleeve under the title of “Folk Song”. I am sure there are a million interpretations to almost every line Will Oldham sings, and this mystery is another reason for his fame. If fame it ever is.

On this new record you’ll find a real band in the background, as always with Will’s brother Paul in the lead, accompanying almost every song, but you won’t hear much of it. It is almost as if they were in another room while recording. The fickle and soft voice of Will Oldham is very much in the background, who sings as if he were alone and singing to himself mostly. Especially on songs that have someone singing the same lines and tunes as Will Oldham in the background, it is easy to get the feeling that Will Oldham is singing to another artists record, until he is left alone again. But when the female voice sets in again on the final song “hard life”, it will lift you off wherever you are seated that moment and fill you with glee and joy. And you’ll turn the record around and listen to it again, as much as your time allows. “Master & everyone” will turn into a good friend, readily invited back again into your life in almost no time. Believe me.

1) The knowledge about the love-song comes from a lecture Nick Cave held at the Vienna School for Poetry, which was just released in a very recommendable book about the school. Other parts are about Falco and Allen Ginsberg. (Residenz Verlag, 2003)

more about Will Oldham / Bonnie Billy / Palace:

review "ease down the road"

review "more reverie"

essay about a "Bonnie Prince Billy" show

03/2003