Bonnie "Prince" Billy

Will Oldham s discography is intimidating to say the least. I ve still yet to hear any of the Palace incarnations or any of the releases under his own name. I m truly only familiar with two Bonnie Prince Billy releases: 1999 s I See A Darkness and last year s Superwolf, which was a collaboration with Matt Sweeney of Chavez.

Portions of both albums impressed me, but neither made enough of an impact for me to seek out more albums from the Oldham oeuvre. I ve been meaning to revisit Darkness though. While Superwolf opted for the subtle, Oldham s latest release, The Letting Go uses theatrics to its advantage.

The backstory to The Letting Go is an interesting one. Oldham recorded the album in Iceland with the aid of producer Valgeir Sigurdsson, who has worked with Bjork. I m guessing that this relationship came about in result of Oldham s opening slot on a 2003 Bjork tour.

Aside from excellent production, The Letting Go also boasts some of the most explosive arrangements of Oldham s career. The strings that open The Letting Go s first song, Love Comes To Me, set the tone appropriately. It s a hell of a first song too, one of the album s best.

Love Comes To Me introduces the vocals of Dawn McCarthy (Faun Fables). McCarthy duets with Oldham on the majority of the album. Despite being a little overused, she brings a lot to the record, especially on Strange Form Of Life and The Seedling, where she might be taking a page from Bjork.

Oldham absolutely kills on The Seedling. Big Friday and Lay And Love are underwhelming, but this is still the most cohesive and arresting music I have heard from Oldham to date.
The finest hour of The Letting Go has to be I Called You Back.

This track is sure to give I See A Darkness a run for its money. On The Letting Go, he s taking chances and most of them pay off. It isn t a record that will hit you upon one listen.

Let it sink in a few times and the songs will reveal themselves more and more. Oldham s songwriting has reached graceful heights and this should go down as a key entry in his epic catlogue.
P.

S. This review is also available at .
(an awesome site) sat down with (Will Oldham) for an and also had him a few songs.

Oldham is fresh off of a U.S. tour that found him playing free shows at record stores across the country.

My friends at even persuaded him to stop by their . Oldham will be back on this fall to promote his new album, The Letting Go. releases it on September 19th.

Speaking of Drag City, has anyone heard the new record (Ys, November 14th)? it online by leaving it in an open directory. There are five songs, and the average length of the tracks is roughly ten minutes.

An all star cast helped put this one together. , ultimate muse, composed string arrangements for the album. (this guy can produce anyone) and helped out on production, while Bill Callahan ( ) makes a vocal cameo on one song.

I keep hearing that Callahan is dating Newsom. Any truth to that?
There will be a lot of talk aobut Ys in the months to come.

I m sure some of it will be about the album s . I haven t had a chance to absorb this one completely, but what I m hearing is an impressive step forward. has an MP3 of Cosmia.