Send "Bonnie Prince Billy " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pitchfork |
 Perhaps the most conventional story Will Oldham has to tell is his own. As a teenager in the late 1980s, he moved from his hometown of Louisville to Hollywood, where he struggled as an actor before eventually landing a small role in John Sayles' Matewan and a larger role in a TV movie about Jessica McClure. Oldham soon defected to music, writing songs first under the Palace set of monikers and later as Bonnie "Prince" Billy. Twenty years later, while he still takes the occasional role, Sayles and McClure represent the poles of his subjects: His songs, often in a skewed country or folk tradition, are full of darkly American oddities and characters trapped down in their own metaphorical wells.Oldham's film career continues to inform his music, as he writes songs as soliloquies and inhabits them the way an actor might perform a dramatic role, transforming dialog and stage direction into something flesh-and-blood, memorable, and moving. He writes in isolation and hires a small cast of backing musicians to help him bring these one-act songs to life. For his latest Bonnie "Prince" Billy album, Wolfroy Goes to Town, he's chosen a cast of regulars, including guitarist Emmett Kelly. Most of the Wolfroy troupe, like composer/multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily and Chicago-based singer-songwriter Angel Olsen, have toured with him for a while now, and backed him on many of his most recent records. Together, they give these new songs a soft, casual vibe, and the minimal instrumentation-- mostly acoustic guitars and bass-- evokes a dark, bare stage. Oldham places the hardiest emphasis on vocals-- not just his own, but those of his players. His female duet partners have tended to act as his opposites, the coo of their voices offsetting his weathered creak. But on Wolfroy, Olsen sounds just as odd and ragged as he does. There may be no spark of contrast between them, but there's a spark nonetheless, and she's one of the most grounded female characters on any Bonnie "Prince" Billy record. The rest of the band's harmonies are rough and pointedly unrehearsed, barely holding together on "Black Captain" and "Quail and Dumplings". Rustic, however, does not mean primitive. "Cows" ends with a sophisticated vocal roundelay that has more in common with British folk than with its American counterpart. It's a lovely moment-- a spare, hushed, and unexpected coda....full text |
| Twentyfourbit |
| As it turns out, our favorite Merle Haggard fan, Will Oldham, does have a new LP on the way after all: Wolfroy Goes to Town, the forthcoming 10-track set features Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s excellent recent touring band of Ben Boye, Van Campbell, Shahzad Ismaily, Emmett Kelly, Danny Kiely, and Angel Olsen. (This lineup put on one of the best intimate shows I’ve ever seen last year at a 200-capacity chapel.) The LP, which is due out via Drag City on October 4, dons the cover art above and tracklist below. One new tune can be previewed in a live clip after the jump as well. Update: “Quail and Dumplings” Official....full text |
| Altmusic |
| With his work under the shifting name Palace, in the '90s, Will Oldham was a dark figure that drew a devoted following of the sad, weird, and alienated. Perhaps due only to the scant biographical information out there in that era —he was rarely photographed and gave few terse interviews— Oldham was assumed to be some saint for the sad. In the years since, Stable Will as seemed more unstable; doing plenty to defy those ideas, starting with his name changed to the jolly-sounding Bonnie "Prince" Billy. Beyond that, Oldham has posed in increasingly-comic photos for his album art, played the buffoon in everything from award-winning art movies to Wonder Showzen episodes to R. Kelly videos, and, even, assaulted his own music. 2004's Sings Greatest Palace Music found Oldham, somewhat infamously, taking to the holiest vestiges of his early, peak period with a collection of slick Nashville session musicians. Beyond provoking his early fans, it was an example of the 'project album' mentality that Oldham has appointed for most of the past decade; employing different collaborateurs (Tortoise, Matt Sweeney, the Cairo Gang) and different musical guises to different effect, sometimes making albums that played as little more than larks. If you were to judge this book by its cover, Wolfroy Goes to Town would be the latest entry in Oldham's ongoing comedy routine; what with that candy-pink artwork and madcap title. But the 21st longplayer for this indefatigable "Prince" of underground Americana is his first straight-up sad and stripped down set since 2006's The Letting Go. It's also perhaps his best, or at least most beautiful, since 1999's I See a Darkness. And, finally, it's a tonic for those old fans who wondered if Oldham would ever again make an album that played like those old ones....full text |
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