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Bonnie “Prince” Billy
Beware
Review By Jesse Jarnow
On the surface, Will Oldham's music is disturbingly undisturbed. Now almost 20 albums into his career, which has found him recording under variations on the Palace moniker and, since 1999, as Bonnie Prince Billy, that's unlikely to change. But, just as always, just below, is the teeming world that the easy-going countrypolitan twang above hardly hints at. Even with cooing background vocals, golden strums and rich Americana arrangements, songs become complex psychological entanglements, unrhyming. "I want to be your only friend, is that scary?" he asks on the opening "Beware Your Only Friend."
"You want to be my daughter, I hate it but it's so" he adds later, while harmonies answer back. "I wanted you as my mother, cheering me as I go." Oldham's voice is in typically soaring form: a singer to take seriously (especially since his mind-melting cover of R. Kelly's "I am the Greatest" a few years back). As a songwriter, Oldham calls on the usual mélange of deep folk and early pop. Fragments like the opening phrase of "I Won't Ask Again" curl like standards. But, like Oldham's unwieldy lyrics, which only he could sing convincingly, his melodies aren't yet concise enough to get all the way into the weird past. He'll have another go next year.
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