BONNIE "PRINCE" BILLY : THE PURPLE BIRD

BONNIE "PRINCE" BILLY : THE PURPLE BIRD

Turned To Dust (Rolling On)
London May
Tonight With The Dogs I'm Sleeping
Boise, Idaho
The Water's Fine
Sometimes It's Hard To Breathe
New Water
Guns Are For Cowards
Downstream
One Of These Days (I'm Gonna Spend The Whole Night With You)
Is My Living In Vain?
Our Home

Label : Domino

Release Date : January 31, 2025

Length : 43:29

Review (Dansende Beren) : We zouden lelijk verschieten wanneer we zouden optellen hoeveel uren we al aan Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy besteed hebben met onze koptelefoon van Marshall over onze oren. Will Oldham is een van de beste singer-songwriters in het genre van de countryfolk, zo niet de allerbeste zelfs. Oldham heeft een heel gamma aan alter ego’s zoals Palace, Palace Brothers, Palace Music en dus ook Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. De Amerikaan uit Louisville, Kentucky heeft onder eigen naam en zijn verschillende pseudoniemen al tientallen lp’s uitgebracht, maar het is een onmogelijke opdracht om al die albums terug te vinden op de streamingkanalen. De reden: ze zijn er door Oldham gewoon nooit opgezet wegens een hekel aan het platform. Zijn song “After I Made Love To You” van de plaat Ease Down The Road is zo een van de beste liefdesballades ooit gecomponeerd, maar enkel te beluisteren gegroefd op vinyl of gegoten als cd. Het zij zo, het kenmerkt de artiest wel; gewoon doen en laten waar hij zelf zin in heeft en dat heel regelmatig met gastmuzikanten enerzijds of hij zelf als gastmuzikant voor andere performers anderzijds. Bekijk gerust de encyclopedische pagina eens over de man en zijn samenwerkingen op het wereldwijde web en wenkbrauwen zullen torenhoog opgetrekken. Bij Oldham is het van wezenlijk belang dat we rustig gaan zitten of liggen en dat we meegaan in de verhalen die verteld en gezongen worden. Het helpt als we de hele duur van een van zijn platen door niets of niemand worden gestoord. De artiest neemt ons graag mee naar geheimzinnige plaatsen waar ons de vrijheid wordt gegund om te leven en te beleven. Het enige dat we moeten doen is onze ogen sluiten en het lef hebben om mee te deinen op de muzieknoten en de akkoorden die de man voor ons heeft uitgetekend. We mogen zelf een (hoofd)personage worden, maar evenwel een toeschouwer die vanaf de zijlijn meekijkt naar de gebeurtenissen die zich afspelen voor onze ogen, oren, handen en voeten. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy componeert, musiceert en produceert heel puur; geen computers of (pro)tools om valse stemmen op te schonen bijvoorbeeld, maar gewoon op gevoel en instinct legenden, sagen, mythen en parabels vertellen met eerlijk, oprecht instrumentarium. David Ferguson zat achter het glas in de studio aan de knoppen te draaien. Ferguson is geboren en getogen in Nashville, Tennessee, de bakermat van de country, blues en Amerikaanse folk. Dit belooft veel goeds en we hebben nog geen halve noot gehoord! Goed, ga zitten of leg je neer en laat deze mensen uw gedachten en gevoelens masseren met zachte hand. Wanneer we de teksten beluisteren vallen twee zaken heel erg op. Ten eerste is de lijn tussen hoop en wanhoop, optimisme en pessimisme en positiviteit en negativiteit meer dan flinterdun te noemen. De teksten zijn ook zeer religieus geïnspireerd. Oldham is nochtans altijd zeer vaag gebleven tot nu toe over zijn godsdienstige beleving in interviews. “Turning To Dust (Rolling On)” was de laatste single die enkele dagen voor de release van het album werd vrijgegeven. In heldere woorden vraagt de man zich af waarom we niet gewoon beter overeenkomen voor die uiterst korte periode dat we hier zijn, levend en wel. Hier wordt al vertrouwd op God, een schepper die volgens ons door de singer-songwriter deze keer met grote G mag bestempeld worden. De artiest gebruikt voor deze song – en voor al zijn songs eigenlijk – de basisinstrumenten voor countryfolk: drums, gitaar, bas, viool en piano. Aanvullend krijgen we hier en daar wel trompetten te horen en een mandoline of banjo. De meeste nummers op Purple Bird zijn best traag en rustig, maar met “Tonight With The Dogs I’m Sleeping” mag het een keertje uptempo gaan. Let zeker eens op het fietsbelletje in de song! Op “The Water’s Fine”, “Guns Are For Cowards” en “Our Home” ligt de muzikale levendigheid hoger en voelen we ons uitgenodigd aan een reusachtige houten tafel waar de warme koemelk en zelfgemaakte broodhompen van hand tot hand gaan. Er wordt gelachen en aan het einde van de tafel posteren enkele bluegrassmuzikanten zich om het etende en drinkende volk te vermaken. Op “Boise, Idaho” horen we echter een heel andere man, een man die er voor kiest om nooit meer terug te gaan naar de stad waar surrealisten als Trevor Powers en David Lynch ook leven of hebben geleefd. Het verdriet om een vrouw doet hem deze beslissing maken. We mogen hier in de verwrongen, trieste ziel van Oldham een kijkje nemen. Enkele schijven willen we toch nog graag even nader en iets meer in detail bekijken. “Guns Are For Cowards” is een carnavalslied geworden met een waanzinnige tekst. Stel dat je een shortlist hebt van mensen die je niet graag hebt, zou je die mensen dan in het hoofd, de rug of het been schieten? Wie zou je direct de hersenen uitknallen? Het wordt allemaal heel ’tralala tralalie’ gezongen, wat de tekst een heel naargeestig kantje geeft. Er mag zelfs een dartele accordeon van onder het stof gehaald worden. We vinden het gewoon een heel koddige compositie! Het rustigste lied is “Downstream“. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy maakt zich zorgen over het ongebreideld consumeren van de hele mensheid waardoor we onszelf dreigen kapot te maken. Neen, we maken de planeet niet kapot, we maken het leven erop kapot en dat is een enorm verschil. We willen het niet zien dat de ons voedende en lavende rivier in sneltempo uitdroogt en we staan aan de riviermonding van totale uitroeiing. Het zijn best zware onderwerpen die worden aangesneden op dit album, maar er wordt met “Our Home” toch geëindigd met een mooie sprankel hoop. Samen met bluegrasslegende Tim O’Brien vertaalt Oldham wat voor hem ’thuis zijn’ eigenlijk betekent. Kijk de mensen die je ontmoet in de ogen, dank de Heer voor het brood wordt gebroken, vergeet nooit de namen van je doden en oogst de heerlijkste honing. We zitten uiteindelijk toch opnieuw aan die grote, zware tafel en kijken uit op reusachtige tarwevelden voor ons. De zon gaat onder, maar het blijft zalig warm. We krijgen een glas fris water aangeboden en een schouderklop, een schouderklop die woordeloos wordt beantwoord met een glimlach. Oldham heeft het klaargespeeld om samen met Ferguson en een aantal fantastische gastmuzikanten zoals Tim O’Brien, John Anderson en Brit Taylor zijn beste plaat in de laatste twintig jaar samen te stellen! Een klassieker voor de fans van countryfolk!

Review (Pitchfork) : After so many years of rambling and roaming, domesticity suits Will Oldham well. He got married in the late 2010s, became a father, and settled into home life in Louisville, all of which he commemorated on 2019’s eclectic I Made a Place. That album arrived six years after his last collection of new songs—an eternity for the usually prolific artist—and in retrospect it sounds like a comeback after a handful of odds-and-ends collaborations, covers projects, and conceptual experiments. His new songs were witty and playful, full of shoutouts to Aquaman and The Little Mermaid and spooning with his lady all night, but he sang them with both gratitude and gravity, as though having so much to be thankful for meant having just as much to lose. His subsequent records revealed an artist rejuvenated, with a new subject and sensibility to boost his collaborations with old friends and his follow-up record with a crew of local music educators. He made a place—a family, a community—and prospered there. Superficially, The Purple Bird leaves that place. Oldham traipsed south down I-65 to Nashville, where he worked with an outside producer for only the second time in his career. He met David “Ferg” Ferguson 25 years ago when Oldham sang on Johnny Cash’s cover of “I See a Darkness”; Ferg engineered those sessions, and has since helmed albums for Sturgill Simpson, Tyler Childers, and John Prine. Over the years he and Oldham have grown closer as friends, to the extent that Ferg played at Oldham’s wedding. It seems inevitable, in retrospect, that they would make a record together, but it wasn’t inevitable that they would make such a fine one, Oldham’s best and most focused in some time. Before they even hit record, Ferg told Oldham he didn’t want to make a country album. Instead, he thought they should just make a Bonnie “Prince” Billy album. Thankfully, they weren’t entirely successful. The Purple Bird is a Bonnie “Prince” Billy country record. Oldham gave himself over fully to the Nashville experience, participating in a series of casual songwriting sessions with various local legends and playing with a wrecking crew of musicians who are deft enough to sound like they’ve been backing him on stages all over creation. There’s a freewheeling spirit to the music they created together, a punchy camaraderie that connects these disparate songs from the agitpolka of “Guns Are for Cowards” to the Celtic dreamfolk of “Downstream,” and from the rambunctious ramble of “Turned to Dust (Rolling On)” to the despairing chorus of “Boise, Idaho” (which contains one of Oldham’s loveliest and most forlorn melodies). “Tonight With the Dogs I’m Sleeping” may have the archaic phrasing common in Oldham’s lyrics and song titles, but it’s an old-school country lament, a carouser’s complaint about the missus, with a barroom sing-along and the self-deprecating wordplay of Jerry Reed and Bobby Bare: “Sitting at the bar with a drink or two, telephone rings and it’s you-know-who,” he sings. “You know who’s a-gonna get his ass chewed tonight.” Oldham co-writes and sings with a wry sense of humor, as though he’s both charmed and chagrined to discover that his life fits the contours of a country song. Of course, his brand of country has nothing in common with folks like Jelly Roll or Post Malone. He’s closer to folks like Roger Miller, Tom T. Hall, and Don Williams. You can imagine Cash himself lending his rich voice to “Turned to Dust (Rolling On)” or including “Is My Living in Vain?” on one of his later American Recordings albums. Oldham has always been an immensely intentional and engaged singer, but on The Purple Bird he pushes himself to live up to such idols, and to match the musicians backing him. His vocals have a subtly quivering intensity on “London May,” as though he’s recoiling from some horror, and that makes the chorus sound all the more cathartic. Similarly, he conveys wonder and amazement on the fearful ecological warning “Downstream,” although it may be less at the fragility of nature and more at the majestic twang of duet partner John Anderson. For possibly the first time in his catalog, Oldham sounds starstruck. He seems to be re-evaluating how to use his voice, which is a remarkable thing for an artist 30 years deep into a twisting and singular career. If The Purple Bird sounds like a companion to his previous two studio albums, it’s because they’re all animated by a similar passion for life. Oldham is exhorting his listener to live ardently, to see a lightness rather than a darkness. “Come on in, the water’s fine,” he declares on “The Water’s Fine,” but with less burden than he would have sung it 15 or 20 years ago. There’s an unguarded quality to his performances, even when he ponders impossible questions about hardship and suffering on “Is My Living in Vain?” The song leaves the questions unanswered, but Oldham follows it up with “Our Home,” which provides an ecstatic affirmation. Featuring veteran songwriter and mandolin ace Tim O’Brien, it defines home—one of country music’s most enduring topics, and a new fascination for Oldham—in terms of community. “When the hard times are coming to push you down low, you’re only as good as the people you know.” It’s a rousing anthem of contentment and appreciation, an epiphany that sounds like it’s been years in the making.

Review (At The Barrier) : To be called an Appalachian post-punk solipsist, as he has been, strains even my wordplay. But maybe it’s true. Possibly the only way to get a handle on Will Oldham and his extraordinarily prolific muse. Over a career embracing more than a few other aliases, Bonnie “Prince” Billy is the one with most traction. Now with this, his fifteenth, or thereabout, under that name, alongside a host of duet and other collaborative arrangements. Before that he was Palace Brothers and Palace Music, with only 1997’s Joya, under his own name. If the Oldham trademark is of sparse and spare arrangements, characterised by his wobbly tenor, the image is all backwoods waif, in dungarees and a walrus moustache. Sometimes he breaks free and does something a little more orthodox. And, much as I like the eerie isolation of his purer work, it is his occasional forays, embracing glossier studio polish, that I find myself more often returning. Sings Greatest Palace Music, in 2004, was one, and now, this is another. Bringing in an external producer is something he almost never does, being more than capable by himself. But, by bringing in Nashville veteran, David Ferguson, someone he first met during those sessions when Johnny Cash covered his I See A Darkness, and to which he added backing vocals, there is a sense of alternate witness. The trademark constructions gifted some unexpected cladding. Add in some top notch musicians, to include Tim O’Brien, and it as if Oldham’s lonely outer lane is the main drag. Almost. The ominously entitled Turned To Dust (Rolling On) is every bit as maudlin as it sounds, delightfully so, mordant and morbid both, in that odd way that only a dirge can be this uplifting. A classic southern country soul construction, it opens with pentecostal organ, infusing hefty gospel fumes, added to by the agreeably hokey backing vocals, which adorn Oldham’s more faltering entreaties. Ornery drums clip clop it along, the mood a mix of funereal and eventual salvation. An unexpectedly scything guitar solo segues in, an effective contrast with a plinky plonky piano. Wonderful, a song you may be already be plotting to include at your own wake. London May has a slight change in arrangement, if not of subject seriousness: “Leave it to solitude all along, only the lonely can be so strong. Never has anyone made such a fuss; death looks in the window as only death must.” Piano chords underline the significance of it all, but, by virtue a steady drum beat, it propels a never more frail Oldham vocal into a sense of purpose. Fiddles add to the pathos and it is achingly beautiful. Perhaps it was felt we might need something lighter, so Tonight With The Dogs I’m Sleeping is a variation around the standard country trope, the saddle sore protagonist at the bar, several glasses down, anticipating the outcome back home. Banjo and harmonica vie for attention and it is a all you expect in such a scenario, if with some self-coruscating Oldham sharpness: “I’m all bark, she’s all bite.” Woof! Boise, Idaho is, I guess, the logical next step, the morning after and beyond, a search of the soul from the the doghouse to the unforgiving open road of the ousted. The sort of song steel guitars are made for, and they don’t let you down. A sad and philosophical song, it is followed by the more positive The Water’s Fine. As in come on in. Coming at this stage, the overt unhipness of this track is no great shock, but the Billy curious might wish to avoid this as their first immerse, being near the lovechild of Keep On The Sunny Side and Livvy Neutron-Bomb’s Banks Of The Ohio, From when country was western, never mind post punk, this is almost pre-rock. Me? I love it! Sweeping aside decades of musical progress, Sometimes It’s Hard To Breathe, the highpoint of this record, and of a style that could have been written yesterday, or even tomorrow. The scene and soundscape is a dark desert highway, but no wind in your hair, the baking sun stealing all air from your lungs. Steel howls like a coyote, ahead of Oldham slowly intoning his warning, a vintage organ pumping up in the background. A masterful assemblage of melody and production, arrangement and lyrics: “We can do it, we can make it, for a while.” You can feel the gap, a heavy pause, in that statement. …New Water, another mention of water, something the singer sees as cleansing, is near nursery rhyme simplicity. Hazy brass adds warmth, and the feel is not so distant from the more whimsical aspects of the Neil Young songbook, say, Sugar Mountain. The brass is Bacharach-y, with rodeo waltztime fiddles a surprisingly successful connect. Lulled thereby, the next track feels as if it comes from a completely different project. Set to the oompah band Tex-Mex style of Norteno, it is called Guns Are For Cowards. The visceral assault of “Who would you shoot in the face? Who would you shoot in the brain?” sits at a deliberate cross-purpose with the jaunty arrangement, more so as the la-la-las strike up. Another possible deal breaker for the unconverted, it might also open up ears to the vistas of enjoyment available in these less mainstream genres. Regardless of the words, which offer a hardly controversial message. That message presented, the aquatic theme of cleansing returns for Downstream. Featuring guest vocals, from apparent Nashville legend, John Anderson, I confess not liking his constricted vocal timbre, however much the arrangement is otherwise lifted by some judicious whistle, which lifts sense of sameness that might otherwise be creeping in. Normal service resumes for One Of These Days (I’m Gonna Spend The Whole Night With You), as close a simple lovesong as you are going to get from this auteur. Of course, it is also full of self-doubt and provisos, belying the sweetness of the setting. This is Oldham. I’m uncertain the provenance of including a cover in an already generously proportioned album. Nonetheless, this is what we got, with a stripped back rendition of Is My Living In Vain, once by the Clark Sisters. (Me neither.) With mainly just picked guitar and voice, give or take some muted strings and steel, it feels a riposte to Dylan’s Is Your Love In Vain. And, whenever it was written, that is going to remain my truth. I’d have ended it there, but there is one final track, Our Home, described as a hoedown. Indeed, it starts well, with, presumably, O’Brien’s mandolin scrubbing. However it then dips into what I can only call full happy clappy, which is, I fully concur, my problem and prejudice. Those of a more open mind may embrace, but it’s a skip from me. Sorry. Despite that, this remains a terrific album. One that may help open up the idiosyncracy of Oldham’s oeuvre to a more mainstream audience, if forewarned by the some of the stylistic soundscape. Recommended.