Will Oldham/Palace/Bonnie Prince Billie: S&D

can't help repeating myself but I love "Whipped". as funny as it is affecting, like much of w.o.'s best stuff

the new LP versh is great but I still prefer the bombast of this one
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vSvyxlUdb8

"it's valentine's day / and i'm catatonic" is such a great line

i really like the album he did w/tortoise too

https://soundcloud.com/temporary-residence-ltd-1/bonnie-stillwatter-the-devil-is-people

Will backed by Britt Walford on drums and Zac from Grails on guitar.

and here is the b-side remix by Bundy K. Brown:
https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/202066152%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-ruIxW&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true

*imagining a 'conceptual collaboration' between Will Oldham, Stephen Stills, & these guys
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5d/Sweetwater_sm.jpg*

finally picked up ease down the road, it is pretty good

i like it way better than master & everyone

i could imagine it being a letdown after darkness but 15 years later when it is just another title among oldham's 20-odd albums it is very good

kind of reminds me of "joya", mid-period oldham that is somewhat minor but still interesting and pleasant

wasn't joya the first lp under the will oldham name? it felt momentous to me (at 16) for that reason and so looms large in my personal palace cosmology. really good record still i think. i need to revisit ease down the road.

I like both Joya and EDTR. They're records that could only have been made by a guy in his thirties. Anyway, that's how I like to think of them.

The s/t album from 2013 is, I think, his strongest work in years.

I went back to Master & Everyone a few weeks back and found it really dull. I always confuse that one with Beware (which iirc is pretty good)

oldham sounds so good on this new joan shelley song: https://soundcloud.com/noquarterrex/stay-on-my-shore-by-joan-shelley

He did a low-key show in Louisville the other night, would have been great to be there.

Ease Down The Road is my favorite. And perfect one to listen to this time of year. Pajo's Allman-y solo on "May It Always Be" followed by the line "And in the morning we'll wrestle and ruin our stomachs with coffee."

The only blight on that record is "Just To See My Holly Home." I always skip that one.

nah. that's one of the better songs on that album imo.

ent back to Master & Everyone a few weeks back and found it really dull. I always confuse that one with Beware (which iirc is pretty good)

― Wimmels, Tuesday, June 30, 2015 11:08 AM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i confuse them too. i have never been able to get into master & everyone, it definitely seems super dull and boring, i don't know maybe it will click for me one day

i love holly home!

M&E is like a balm/relief for a troubled psyche, it's soft, tenuous, warm. there are nice subtleties to mark nevers' production.. he also recorded is a woman by Lambchop, which is remarkably lush and spare.

definitely a lot of beautiful and subtle touches poured onto M&E, but the songs (outside of The Way, which is gorgeous and crushing) never really stuck with me.

been many years since i've listened though. should really revisit.

"maundering" resonates, w/its lyrics, and a lean, ranch fence-styled guitar lead.. a minor highlight of the album. weed helped to synchronize with the general wavelength/vibe of the album.

caught them live, maybe a year or so after master and everyone was released. the songs def had more weight and power, spruced up and rocked out somewhat. it helped to be already familiar with the material as well.. they played at one of the better venues (the zephyr) in salt lake city, before it closed down. I believe ZWAN had also played in town that day, as some of the members were in the audience.

http://www.dominorecordco.com/pondscum/

Saw him last night at the Vic in Chicago. He's got an astoundingly gifted band with him right now. The last song -- a medley of "Jolly One (2/15)" and "New Partner" that included harmonies from Maiden Radio (including Joan Shelley and Cheyenne Mize) -- was just gorgeous.

Having heard him in the early days then sort of checking out for good twelve or fifteen years, I'm blown away at the artist he's turned into. The thing that kind of blows my mind is that he still has a long career ahead of him. Really curious where he'll be creatively in another ten years.

Nice, he's been doing that as a set closer for a while:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_FafCJbyWE

So majestic when he's hood flies off at the end of the song. Surely staged.

Will Oldham can control the weather. Next steps in career: mainstream country success, own line of eyeliner, meteorokinesis.

I've been aware of Oldham since his earliest output, which didn't do much for me back then, and in the ensuing years I've dipped in and out of his vast discography. Some albums are good, some not as good, but for some reason I'm one of those guys for whom "I See a Darkness" is the only Oldham I'll ever play. The guy is certainly gifted, but I sometimes feel like there is a secret language I'm just not understanding, or other people are pretending to understand. Is it me, or is it him?

A sentence I have not heard anyone utter in at least twenty years: "There's a song on the new Bonnie Prince Billy album you've just got to hear." Talented chap but has been coasting / resting on his laurels for a long time.

It was a while ago but I think Superwolf has some must-hears.

I really want that album he did with Bitchin Bajas with the fortune cookie lyrics

josh - i think, at least to me, the 'secret' language you allude to is rather just the 'world' of palace/bonnie itself. will's skew-whiff delivery aside, the appeal for me is how he fluidly embodies his work... the way he just seems to breathe and live everything thats inside him. it can seem cryptic on the surface. really i think its just existential. i feel the same way about jandek, who's existential throughout his catalogue, too. while jandek's a tough listen, sometimes, i can sit and read jandek's lyrics for hours on end. digressing a bit, but... i suppose that's as succinct as i can try to be about will. maybe it sounds like im talking out my arse... im just trying to articulate what you picked up on a bit.

I think the best record he did was the one with Nashville session guys, Sings Greatest Palace Music. I didn't mind Singer's Grave a Sea of Tongues, but whatever. I've always found him just a bit...ahh, ehh. He's got good taste in stuff, for sure.

Ease Down The Road is my pick. Also, his book-long conversation with Alan Licht is pretty good at articulating the choices of persona, arrangements, etc.

fave thing he ever did was that version of Hot Chip's I Feel Better, "I Feel Bonnie"

How does this thread have no mention of the gorgeous, moving, lyrical The Letting Go? Dawn McCarthy brings ellipsoid, inverted harmonies from another dimension, Valgeir Sigurðsson's production and orchestration is sympathetic and minimal, and the songs are understated and absolutely devastating.
Oldham's greatest work bypasses form and makes an unusually direct emotional connection. If you don't feel it, you don't, but I do.
Seek: Days in the Wake, Hope EP, Viva Last Blues, Arise, Therefore, Black/Rich Music, Lost Blues, I See a Darkness, Little Lost Blues, The Letting Go
Destroy Sings Greatest Palace Music (sorry, I know many like it) - apart from TLG he kind of lost me after that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsddBLr6pFc

yeah there are tons of great songs in his stuff from the last decade... he just releases a lot of stuff, which i think minimizes the market/word-of-mouth impact of any one album or song.

I was completely obsessed during my college years. Yeah, as beautifully articulated above, it's less catchy jams and more about a lilting, dark/light mystic world that he conjures and inhabits. I think he's a brilliant lyricist and persona.

This is his most underappreciated song in recent years that I've heard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIv-pD6R7VI

I love this all-time classic post (well okay, actually two posts)

i went to a fair in a small and quaint english town once & all the villagers were wearing costumes & among them walked bonnie prince billy

― schlump, Saturday, 15 November 2014 06:51 (1 year ago) Permalink

i have a picture somewhere

it was nice because there was a moment when we pointed across the harbour while we were eating at a man with a big beard wearing all denim, & said that he looked like bonnie prince billy, this amusing because bonnie prince billy's look is that of the strange man of the village, probably at least approximately replicated in most small and quaint villages

but it was bonnie prince billy

― schlump, Saturday, 15 November 2014 06:53 (1 year ago) Permalink

I'm far from a BPB completist, but I feel comfortable saying that the best thing he's done in recent years = helping to launch Angel Olsen's career. The Now Here's My Plan EP of reworked old material is also a highlight... I seem to recall the 2013 s/t LP being nice though I haven't listened to it since it first came out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSO2SqwI-cI <<< this is hawt

A like a lot, or at least some, of what many of you have mentioned - I want to say I've enjoyed The Letting Go and more recently Beware and Lie Down Into the Light, though not Plays Greatest - but like I said, "Darkness" is the only one I honestly ever go back to. It could be that at least from my perspective, even if his other stuff is good, that album is just better? I dunno. Like I mentioned, I've been at least casually following him since, I dunno, 1993 or so? That's when I moved to Chicago, and that's when a lot of friends of mine were really into Palace. But Palace never did it for me then, and every several years I try again and it has yet to click. I don't find it objectively "bad," I just can't put my finger on what's pushing me away. (I'm also not a fan of Slint, so who knows.)

I think the persona thing may be what keeps me a few arms lengths away. I mean, Dylan has a persona, too, but I've never had much of an emotional connection to his music, even the stuff I like best, yet that's never been a problem; I find him best at his funniest, not his most heartbreaking. But BPB, I've had people say "you have to listen to such and such song/album, it will just reduce you to tears!" Yet while I can hear, academically, what he's after, perhaps it's the persona stuff that keeps me from embracing it, or getting out of it what he wants me to.

That said, like Dylan, I think Oldham can be really funny, too, but maybe it's just funny in all the wrong places and that throws me off.

i like this guy most on side-projects it seems. that Bitchin Bajas thing (weiiird meditative noodling) and Superwolf are highly recommended!

lie down in the light & beware are both great

His most recent 'proper' album, Singer's Grave - A Sea of Tongues, is really very good.

i adore all the palace stuff, ISAD, joya, all BPB up to ease down the road, after that i find him really boring and spotty but there is a lot i haven't listened to. master and everyone, beware, etc are snoozefests, though lie down in the light has a few songs i really enjoy. i still ahven't heard greatest palace music! i bet i would like it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V0NbUYb9BY

My friend Caroline Peyton sings on Singer's Grave, she'd worked w/ Mark Nevers previously and Will thought her voice would be perfect for "Quail and DUMPLINGS!."