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

huh. was that some crazy limited edition?

If it's self-released, it's definitely limited edition.

been listening to a lot of palace stuff lately, it's so good.

also i have a question: what is "hosing" and why does the fact that death to everyone is gonna come make hosing more fun? serious question lol

btw i have a hard time feeling passionate about anything post i see a darkness. even if some of it is good it doesn't quite match up.

that was the cutoff point for me too, not sure why

I have really been enjoying this Greatest Palace Music album tho

xxp I always just took it as meaning "using a hose", like I imagine a guy watering his garden with a huge smile on his face, thinking about death coming to everyone.

lol

never heard greatest palace music, need to check it out. for me lately it's been lots of viva last blues and arise therefore. joya is good too

The new one is very good although a bit weird. It's mostly re-recordings of songs from 2011's Wolfroy Goes To Town. There is an EP of cover songs that comes with the first run of vinyl versions that is really fun. This is the tracklist:

C1 That's My Kind Of Night (Luke Bryan)
C2 Better Than I Used To Be (Tim McGraw)
C3 Let Me Love You (Ne-Yo)
C4 There Are Worse Things I Could Do (from "Grease")
D1 Loving You Is Fun (Easton Corbin)
D2 Die Young (Ke$ha)
D3 Take Care (Drake)
D4 I'm On My Way Home Again (The Everly Brothers)

so i feel like his voice changed a lot starting with the albums after ISAD, it lost that sense of frailty that was so intriguing in the early palace records. something bland about a lot of the later records. i haven't heard much from "ease down the road" so i don't know if that's a transitional album but there is a stark difference between ISAD and master & everyone, dude smoothed out a LOT and becomes less interesting as result

Didn't he get voice lessons around that time?

He learned how to sing ;)

There's a lot of good stuff post-Ease, with 'The Letting Go' probably the pick of the bunch.

I'm really enjoying the new album, think it's his best for ages. Has a nice live feel to it, and the Wolfroy songs are different enough to be worthwhile, for me at least.

I feel like his father's passing provides a certain partition to his career:

1993 - 1997: Palace
1998 - 2004: Bonnie Prince Billy 1.0
2005 - : Bonnie Prince Billy 2.0

Would anyone recommend the Alan Licht book? I've only scanned it a few times.

Prolly the best story we have about a cameo is Will Oldham. He and his father were big fans and one of the ways they bonded was by watching Jackass. It kinda blew our minds because we didn’t realize someone that smart liked our stuff. Anyway, unfortunately his father passed away a couple of years ago and one of the ways will thought he could pay homage to him was by being in jackass 3D. So he reached out to one of our cameramen, Lance Bangs, and asked to get in touch with us. Lance said sure but he had to write a song about Lance's life first... and he did. A really wonderful touching song and so Lance put Will in touch with us. We are big Will Oldham fans and were thrilled to have him in the film.

Johnny Knoxville on casting Will Oldham as a lion tamer in Jackass 3D.

whoops, gorilla tamer.

The book is fantastic, a must-read even if you're a casual an. I'm a devotee but I have recommended it to non-fans who are very taken with its description of the creative process.

So Johnny Knoxville doesn't think I'm smart?????

A new interview, touching on religious discourse and the Nashville scene, sort of in line with the Alan Licht book: http://www.aquariumdrunkard.com/2014/10/09/bonnie-prince-billy-the-aquarium-drunkard-interview/

(Also, it's unsurprising that Oldham's interest in Dylan trails off after the gospel albums....)

he did do a cover of brownsville girl though!

his criterion top ten was a fun read

Has this cover ever been discussed on ILM?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z7LdJGhf2XI

damn lost blues and other songs is 100% all killer no filler

bites scharpling and wuster pretty hard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUDLmRifMUk#t=266

xpost: don't think that's a cover, I think Oldham wrote it specifically for Staton's album. The version on Little Lost Blues is a demo.

Ah I didn't know that, what a stunning track at any rate.

I was at this show, good one from the archives ("Ohio Riverboat Song"/"I Am A Cinematographer"), age 24:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NYI8q2NZRM

damn "west palm beach" / "gulf shores" duo is killing it for me recently. just love those two songs so much. i am in SC right now and it has been warm and beautiful and the air smells like the ocean and there are palm trees everywhere and i have been rocking these two songs like crazy

SC btw is south carolina not southern california

Easily his greatest 7". Nothing else in his discography sounds quite like it.

yea! i'm just astonished too at how good all the palace stuff is. took a while for me to finally pick up the first two and "lost blues" and the quality is all very high amidst such a diversity in styles and approaches from the first palace record up through i see a darkness imo

Yeah, Days in the Wake, Lost Blues, Viva Last Blues, I See a Darkness, and Lie Down in the Light are the highlights for me. I like a good deal of his BPB work, but once he finds a more comfortable mode of singing and writing (pretty much following I See a Darkness) his work seems less often to have a certain exploratory quality.

Although Get on Jolly and The Wonder Show of the World have plenty of loose threads, to be sure....

haven't heard either of those! man this guy has so many albums. the post-ISAD BPB records i have are master & everyone, lie down in the light (which yea is very very good), beware (which i didn't like at first but is growing on me, esp. the second half). oh i think i have superwolf but i need to dig out from somewhere, haven't listened to it in a long while.

Get on Jolly (basically droney guitar noodling, but really gorgeous Dirty Three-ish noodling by Mick Turner, over verse adapted from Tagore's Gitanjali) is notable for having some of Oldham's most open song structures, I think; it's much looser than Moon Pix (on which Turner also played), but it's interesting to listen to those albums together.

oh rad, yea i have moon pix, need to get some more dirty three albums too, i love those guys.

Yeah, Dirty Three are great, although I came to like them more when I accepted that their albums basically worked minor variations on their established (but compelling) sound. But that's the case with so many bands....

this helped me get in to get on jolly

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

really adore get the fuck on jolly live too

In that Licht book he talks about West Palm Beach/Gulf Shores being his Jimmy Buffett single. Ever since I read The Long Secret I associate it with WPB.

Easily his greatest 7". Nothing else in his discography sounds quite like it.

― one way street, Thursday, November 6, 2014 5:34 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah don't think he'll ever top that 7". some days i think that's all he really needed to release, ever.

I've had a hard time getting really into anything he's done since Master and Everyone. Most of the output up to that point I like.

Master and Everyone itself I like, although at times it feels almost uncomfortably intimate and tender, in a similar (but very Oldhamian) way to Blue.

I'M LONG SINCE DEAD AND I LIVE IN HELL
SHE'S THE ONLY ONE THAT I LOVE WELL
WE WERE RAISED TOGETHER AND TOGETHER WE FELL
GOD IS WHAT I MAKE OF HIM

I do not believe he has written anything that troubling and compelling in the last 10 years, but would be happy to be corrected

^^^ especially when you imagine it being sung from the perspective of Bart Simpson

If you like the "open/exploratory" Palace stuff and you haven't heard Superwolf that's the best place to start getting into the BPB stuff. It has that same startling vibe where songs unfurl in unexpected ways. After that, I suggest exploring the trilogy of live albums - Summer in the Southeast, Is It The Sea? and Wilding in the West. That cracked, fragile swell of his early material still remains in his live stuff.

superwolf is great, kinda zeppelin
i really like lie down in the light and the letting go

goat and ram is such a great song!!!

Goat and Ram is so awesome that the next few songs seem underwhelming in comparison, but they're actually really good.

i don't even remember what they are
all is goat and ram