Not that you're necessarily going to be as psyched about this Bongwater reissue as Cup is, but we'll have you know that she's already listened to it, oh, about seven or eight times, and it's been here less than a week! When she first heard this album back in 1992 she'd yet to find out what bong water actually was, and only thought it to be an odd band name. Now many out-of-print moons later, Power Of Pussy is back and it continues to hold a very high spot on Cup's all-time faves list! And Andee's as well! The combined genius of Kramer and Ann Magnuson is responsible for this amazing album which is at times twistedly satirical, brazenly bizarre, dreamily lovely, ballsily glammy, heartbreakingly bittersweet and thoroughly entertaining. More a string of dizzying vignettes than individual songs it includes a rendition of Dudley Moore's "Bedazzled". Plus you'll find out about the "fat lead singer for Canned Heat". So great!
Only the biggest stoners or hardiest AQ list readers will even make it to this review. Which is precisely the problem with Bongzilla. Unless you're a pot smoking college student, a stoned metal head, or just an all around dirtbag, Bongzilla is an unbelievably stupid band name. It's the sort of name that would have Beavis And Butthead giggling and saying things like "Um, huh huh, he said bongzilla, huh huh." But let's be honest, Bongzilla is the perfect name for these guys, stoned and druggy and enveloped in a swirl of pot smoke and day old bongwater, at the same time, a crushing, stomping, downtuned metal behemoth. Sludgy and monstrously dirgelike, but with plenty of stoner groove. We'd dare go so far as to say Bongzilla are one of the best stoner sludge bands around. In fact, they manage to take the sound of EYEHATEGOD and all that sort of nihilistic NOLA stoner doom, groovy hip shaking stoner pop, and all manner of drug metal, and mix it with a big old dose of acid drenched space doom a la Hawkwind or Monster Magnet. A crushing dirgelike stoner riff sort repeates over and over eventually sort of splintering apart into slow floating slabs of fuzz guitar, drifting all hazy and mesemerizng, a blown out outer space psych jam of monumental proportions. The 12+ minute "Stonesphere" is the ultimate Bongzilla trip, a groovy tarpit riff, that is eventually smeared into long loping streaks of drug addled space rock / krautrocky bliss out, complete with seventies style talk box vocals buried way down in the mix. So tough it out, make it past the dumb (but WAY appropriate) name, the cover art of a soldier smoking pot in front of an American flag with pot leaves instead of stars, and the goofy Amerijuanican album title, and prepare to sit back and drift off into a goloriously druggy oblivion. If Bongzilla were called Krakow or Ultrablackbuzzhole or Fuckcrush or Strangle Flanger or something appropriately brutal and perplexing, if they were Japanese, if they had songs about serial killers instead of smoking pot, if they had super spiffy retro graphic design, or released super limited picture discs and multiple versions of every record and managed to sell as many records on eBay as they did in stores, but sounded EXACTLY the same, you can bet the rest of the stoner / sludge / doom / drone elite (Corrupted, EYEHATEGOD, Green Machine, Boris, Church Of Misery, Yob, etc.) would be cowering in terror (or at least, watching their backs), and all those crazy stoner-doom-drone collector freaks would be slobbering up a storm!
The last official U.S. release from the now retired label/store Howling Bull America (who we will miss something awful and who leave a void in our dwindling little punk rock community that will undoubtedly be filled by more cellphones/S.U.V.s/restaurants). This is the latest e.p. from Michigan's reefer obsessed, downtuned stoners. Crushing and sloooow and heavy as fuck. Three new tracks (including the wonderfully titled "Grim Reefer") and four live cuts (only on the cd).
Bongzilla: the name says it all, doesn't it? Crushing, HEAVY sludge-metal with a massive pot fixation is what you'll find here. Now, sometimes releases in this genre (yes, it's a genre) are sooooo great, unexplicably transcendent, and weirdly compelling, that we'll recommend 'em to all and sundry (like Electric Wizard, Corrupted, Sleep, Boris). Bongzilla is perhaps too single-minded about the pot thing (and what passes for the musical thing too) to warrant such a general recommendation. But they do this sort of sludge metal quite well, and if you're already quite partial to the heavy stuff -- i.e. you've got some Grief, Sleep, Eyehategod, Bongzilla (duh) etc. in your record collection -- you'll probably want to check this out. Especially if you also smoke pot. The song titles alone provide ample stoner entertainment! I mean, "Keefmaster"? Musically, it's all about massive fat riff (rhymes with spliff) repetition, in a simple, slow, sub-Sabbath mode, littered with the usual sort of drug-related samples we've come to expect. Not a lot here for the attention-span impaired though, or maybe there is, depends on how you use it.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Hey you read Windy's Guardian column on stoner rock, right? Here's one of several exemplary examples, as it were. More weed fueled fury from these Midwestern ne'er do wells. Sludgey stoned thud rock with copious samples warning against the evil of drugs. Includes an awesome Sabbath cover ("Under The Sun").
What is it with stoner rock, and its seemingly unending appeal to those of us who don't smoke pot. Perhaps it musically induces a similar mindstate and headspace as getting totally blazed, but how the heck would we know. Yeah, it's heavy and brutal, downtuned and crushing, groovy and brutal, but there's something else going on in there, it's gotta be the pot! And if smoking pot DOES actually sound/feel like this, then we're totally kicking ourselves for abstaining for the last 30+ years.
If any one band truly embodies the sprit of stoner metal, it would have to be Bongzilla. C'mon, they're called BONGZILLA after all!! And while the name might have you thinking these guys are some kind of joke, this shit is deadly serious. These guys may love their weed, and sing about it incessantly, but they totally destroy, wielding their skull crushing stoner doom riffage like stoned cavemen atop prehistoric dragons, bong in one hand, bloodied axe in the other. Similar to how Japan's serial killer obsessed stoner rockers Church Of Misery lace their songs with news snippets and sound samples of all their favorite killers, Bongzilla tracks are packed with news and propaganda, radio broadcasts and snippets of conversation, all about pot and smoking pot, the value of pot, the legal issues, facts about harvesting, police reports, sometimes replacing the vocals all together, the band will lock into a killer groove and just pound it into the ground, over a constant litany of pro pot propaganda. But hell, it fits perfectly. And eventually that stuff becomes just part and parcel of Bongzilla's sound.
Which in other hands might be overbearing, cuz if a band doesn't have songs, and RIFFS, then nothing else would matter. But these guys kill, the riffs thick and distorted, groovy and weirdly catchy, some tracks a plodding ultra doom dirge, others furiously rocking sludge, the vocals a near black metal screech, the drums pounding and massive, but it's ALWAYS all about the riffs (and the weed). And the riffs here are massive and hooky, super distorted and blown out, hypnotic and so so so heavy.
This reissue compiles Bongzilla's smoking debut, Stash, and their follow up ep, Methods For Attaining Extreme Altitudes, a three song chunk of ultra sludgy stoner doom, culminating in the nearly 14 minute stoner metal epic "Smoke / I Love MaryJane", which begins at a pretty serious clip, before slipping into spaced out bleary eyed smoke drenched ultra doom, a minimal plodding trudge, bordering on Khanate territory, building gradually to a chaotic Hawkwind meets Monster Magnet stoner space rock freak out, all swirling distorted guitar, washes of keening feedback, more snippets and samples, the whole thing eventually blissing out into a buzzing droning tribal outro.
We can only imagine how good this stuff must sound stoned, or maybe if you were -actually- stoned, they would cancel each other out and you would hear nothing but silence. Whatever...
Needless to say, this shit is WAY recommended, for stoners and straight edge stoner sympathizers alike...
A film version of Strange Lines And Distances has made the rounds at some of the established film festivals around the globe for the past few years; and now Experimedia offers the video documentation of the piece along with an edit of the soundtrack specifically rendered for vinyl. Bonnetta's work is conceptually driven (and is exceptionally well executed), based upon the first wireless transmission that Marconi broadcast from one side of the English Channel to the other. Out of this single transmission, we not only have a lineage that begets radio then television then cellphones then iPhones then 'the cloud' and onto whatever the next means of immediate communication may be on the horizon; but we also have all of the miscommunications, hidden messages, lost transmissions, EVPs, numbers stations, alien voices, and any other tech-gnostic renderings of the machine as a telepathic device communing with the divine. Bonnetta's piece is a suitably eerie score of shortwave radio drones and oceanic field recordings, compositionally reflecting Marconi's notion that the radio transmission does not actually disappear but just becomes incrementally fainter. As such, Bonnetta's audio sensibilities owes a considerable amount to the long-shot works of Alan Lamb, Jim Haynes, Thomas Koner, and BJ Nilsen. The video work operates on a simple, yet effective conceit with two channels of video representing both sides of the Channel. The video was all shot on 16mm film and maintains a muted color palette of wintery grays and cold blues as Bonnetta tracks through both landscapes which hold numerous environmental similarities, tied through Marconi's idea that his first wireless transmission is still bouncing back and forth between these two sites albeit infinitesimally faint. It's a really beautiful piece of work; and not surprisingly won a handful of awards. The lp contains extended compositions of the soundtrack, a very lengthy piece of critical analysis of the work, a dvd with the film itself, and digital downloads of both the video and the audio. Whew!
Following the self-titled release he put out on his own label last year, Bonnie Prince Billy aka Will Oldham is back to serving the corporate overlords of Drag City with this new album, the umpteenth zillionth in his discography (if we've counted correctly - it's tough, especially with the man's many monikers).
All BPB fans will surely want this, and if you're a fan some of these songs may sound a bit familiar, as it's a Nashville makeover of mostly tracks taken from 2011's Wolfroy Goes To Town, or associated B-sides. These songs didn't sound like this at all on Wolfroy, though - these reworkings are lush with lap steel and gospel singing, Earl Scrugg's grandson plays mandolin, there's banjo and fiddle too, it's very very Nashville all right, and as such, this could be a really good record with which to introduce fans of classic country to this indie artist. Oldham sounds a bit like a laconic Townes Van Zandt, some of the songs here so nicely sad and weary, others with bit more Nashville pro powered pep to 'em. We're liking it a lot.
A few years ago Will Oldham played the always awesome Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival that takes place in Golden Gate Park every autumn. While the festival has indeed been best known for featuring amazing performances by bluegrass and country icons like Doc Watson, Emmylou Harris, Dolly Parton, Earl Scruggs, Gillian Welch, etc. It was such a perfect setting for the twangier side of Oldham's (Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's) sound. This new live vinyl only release billed as Bonnie Billy & The Picket Line (the man loves his ever shifting monickers!) finds Oldham and his band totally tapping into a distinctly more bluegrass sound, turning many of their great songs from the past into something completely different and way more country, much of it significantly more upbeat and uplifting than many of the studio recordings. Yet still, it's the slow and stunning rendition of "Lay And Love" that has been giving us chills. It's also fitting Oldham used this opportunity cover a Merle Haggard song, "Ramblin Fever", as well as a Ralph Stanley song, "Hemlocks And Primroses".
It's a true testament to a great songwriter when they are able to rearrange and reimagine their songs in a multitude of ways and Oldham has proven time and time again he's definitely one of the special ones.
Whether you have been loving Will Oldham's onslaught of recent releases or you find yourself clinging to his earlier works, this new eight song record should please fans of either stripe. Essentially a covers record, this is one of the most intimate Bonnie Prince Billy records to date. We love the ultra impromptu feel, like a gathering of friends around the hearth to record an ep on the fly. Those present can't help but sway gently to the familiar melodies. Whether covering Bjork, the Mekons, Danzig, or R. Kelly, Oldham makes the song unmistakably his own. Centered around his vocals and guitars for the most part with some subtle accompaniment by Meg Baird and Greg Weeks of Espers fame and some ghostly cello from Maggie Wienk. Really nice!
Seems like everywhere you look these days you're bombarded with praise and press for Will Oldham. From The New York Times to Wire Magazine it's been hard to escape images of ol' Bonnie Prince Billy, but truth be told, he is one fine songwriter who deserves much of the praise and accolades coming his way. While not all of his recent outings have totally blown us away, we're very much digging the rich and sometimes dark country sounds on Beware. The instrumentation is a bit more nuanced and compelling than on his previous effort Lie Down In The Light. It kind of made perfect sense that a customer who was in the store the first time we played this asked what Lee Hazlewood record this was, and were surprised and happy to find out that it was actually Will Oldham. With appearances on the big screen, a recent artist in residency in the Marin Headlands over the Golden Gate Bridge from here, and this new set of songs, Oldham has been one busy bee and we think well worthy of all that adoration and praise.
When the last proper Bonnie Prince Billy album, Beware, came out, Drag City released a very limited 10" version that contained a set of bonus songs not on the album. That 10" also came with a download of the whole Beware album and featured the exact same cover artwork as the album itself only in 10" form. And Drag City for some weird reason pretended that there was no vinyl in the sleeve, which made no sense. Confusing, kind of. But gone in a flash they were. Recently, though, one of our distributors discovered a very small stash of these, so Bonnie Prince Billy fans you have one final chance to snag these four songs that will not be released on cd or in digital format, and are not available anywhere but here. As prolific as Mr. Oldham is, he still has yet to put out a bad record and these four songs are really as strong as anything that was on Beware. So like we said it's probably a very small window, but if you missed it the first time around you can try to snag one now! And if you need to be reminded of what we had to say about Beware when we reviewed the record proper:
Seems like everywhere you look these days you're bombarded with praise and press for Will Oldham. From The New York Times to Wire Magazine it's been hard to escape images of ol' Bonnie Prince Billy, but truth be told, he is one fine songwriter who deserves much of the praise and accolades coming his way. While not all of his recent outings have totally blown us away, we're very much digging the rich and sometimes dark country sounds on Beware. The instrumentation is a bit more nuanced and compelling than on his previous effort Lie Down In The Light. It kind of made perfect sense that a customer who was in the store the first time we played this asked what Lee Hazlewood record this was, and were surprised and happy to find out that it was actually Will Oldham. With appearances on the big screen, a recent artist in residency in the Marin Headlands over the Golden Gate Bridge from here, and this new set of songs, Oldham has been one busy bee and we think well worthy of all that adoration and praise.
Bonnie Prince Billy (aka Will Oldham) keeps his music comin' in snack-size packets. He sure seems to love the ep format, and that's surely fine with his fans. Keep that flow good and steady, keep 'em all good and happy. The title track is taken from his most recent full length The Letting Go, and it's accompanied by "The Way" and "Buried Treasure". In a mere three songs, he effectively encapsulates his full Bonnie Prince Billy spectrum of muted country rock and creeping mournful balladry. Cold & Wet? Not at all, more like warm, dry and comfortingly familiar. So, if you or someone you know has yet to experience Mr. Oldham's burnished folk rock finery this little one is a really good place to start.
Bonus: The cd includes a video for the title track.
Following his friendly get-together with the Tortoise gents, Mr. Will Oldham gathers 'round his musical pals Faun Fables' Dawn McCarthy, brother Paul Oldham, Emmett Kelly, Jim White and Valgeir Sigurdsson for a trio of songs. One is an earthen duet, one a swampy hoedown and -- in our opinion perhaps the best of the bunch -- the last is Oldham's solitary voice resting gently atop a haunting drifty drone bed. Nice.
A couple years back Will Oldham adopted the Bonnie 'Prince' Billy moniker and released what stood as the crowning achievement of his career, the brilliant I See a Darkness. Now he returns to form with an album that is quite possibly even more heartbreaking, yet strangely more upbeat and optimistic. Instead of grim songs about death, we get lonely songs of love filled with spirit and hope and even a little joy. The instrumentation is much more eclectic, and the compositions range from dark a capella to backwoods country swing. With guest spots from Freakwater and Dave Pajo (and Harmony Korine?!?), Oldham has created an album that has raised the bar yet again. It's funny how the guy manages to renew your interest even after you swore you were tired of him (as I do often).
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
Will Oldham has adopted a new alter ego. No longer Palace, not even just Will Oldham, he's the artist currently known as Bonnie 'Prince' Billy. While the past few Palace/Oldham records weren't anything really to write home about, almost all of the Bonnie 'Prince' Billy singles and this album have been exceptional. Idiosyncratic vocals that don't warble all that much and the working class approach to acoustic based rock are what you expect from him, but you'd never guess he'd get so scary.
Another 'enhanced single' to add to your ever-mushrooming Bonnie Prince Billy library! Who came up with that term anyways?! Enhanced!? Its dictionary definition is "to increase or improve in value, quality, desirability, or attractiveness". Sounds appealing, if somewhat subjective, doesn't it? Here it simply means "includes a video".
Anyways, the title track "Lay & Love" comes from BPB's most recent full length The Letting Go. It features lovely guest vocals by Faun Fables' Dawn McCarthy. That tune is accompanied by two non-album tracks "Senor" and "Going To Acapulco". No big bells and whistles nor surprises, just ol' reliable Oldham goodness that needs no 'enhancing'.
If you have any more room in your heart for Bonnie "Prince" Billy, the space will not be wasted on Lie Down In The Light, an entirely sturdy, mature, and compelling piece of work. If you've already got a few inches worth of Mr. Oldham's wax on your record rack, you may not need to make the journey. You know which camp you fall into. Unlike the new Spiritualized record, however, we wouldn't implore a virgin to Will's tawdry folk songs to dig deeper in the catalogue. Lie Down In The Light is a fine place to start, rife with the heartbreaking melodies and cunning witticisms that have formed the backbone of his catalog. Furthermore, there are some subtle variations on his tried and true techniques, including much more falsetto, some boss hand-drumming, duets with Ashley Webber, and a lyrical emphasis on issues like mortality, family, and transcendence, delivered with much more urgency. The record also shares a unique kinship with Baby Dee's Safe Inside The Day, the result of Will having learned a thing or two producing the diverse instrumentation used in those sessions. As usual, solid and meaningful fare from one of America's great living songwriters.
The new album from Will Oldham & friends is simply wonderful. And we know we rave about Oldham a lot, from his work with Palace Bros to the solo material, but really we mean it -- this is one of his best records. In fact, we think that without the charming but sometimes syrupy twang prevalent on his earlier efforts, Master and Everyone has finally launched Oldham into the same lofty, hallowed territory as other iconoclastic folk practitioners such as Townes Van Zandt. Yeah, this is that good.
The new record has the same kind of low-key charm as his last offering, Ease On Down the Road, although while that record had a sunny back-porch vibe and moments of sly, naughty humor, the laconic, mellow sound of Master And Everyone is tinged with melancholy - as is much of Oldham's recorded output - but doesn't try to reach into the inky realms of cathartic intensity found on I See A Darkness (which is one of the best records he's made). Instead, the feeling is familiar and comforting, as Oldham wraps a honeyed falsetto or low, secretive whisper around distant stories of love and lonelines, filtered through the phrasing of early god-fearing folk balladeers. Female harmonies add to the sweetness. Gone is Oldham's faux Appalachian hillbilly guise, and the tenuous, always-cracking vocal warble, and the sometimes pointlessly peurile lyrics, and in its place is a warm, muted, dark folk record. Very reminiscent of seventies British folk, especially Nick Drake, with gorgeous female vocals perfectly complementing Oldham's warm languorous voice. A perfect drifiting off record.
Probably the best testimonial to the goodness of this record is not the fact that the aQ staffers who're already Bonnie Billy fans like it, but the fact that Andee, aka staunch Oldham naysayer (who liked almost nothing after the Palace Bros debut), LOVES this record too. And that's saying somethin'!
Proving himself once again to be a card-carrying member of the When-Do-They-Ever-Sleep? Club, the very prolific (and perhaps more importantly, very consistent) Will Oldham offers up yet another cd ep. Fans will surely revel in the first and third songs which are steeped in Oldham's trademark hushed melancholic ache. However, the second, "Ruby", is a bit of a surprise. It's a fiery number that threatens to invade Nick Cave's furious domain. Quite startling, indeed. Oh, and this one comes with the added treat of visuals courtesy of filmmaker Harmony Korine. The combination is quite fitting given the volatility of the second song and the barebones mournfulness of the other two and overall, makes for a great a/v treat.
BPB is back, once again. We got these direct from Will Oldham's own Royal Stable label (who also put out that self-titled Bonnie Prince Billy record we also carry). Being rather limited and all, we won't go into a ton of detail here, you probably know (if) you want one...
The A-side, he tells us, is a cover of an "almost-traditional" Irish tune (originally recorded by The Dubliners, we think), while the B-side is a version of a song written by the wonderful Appalachian balladeer John Jacob Niles. Both lovely and folky/old-timey of course, hushed and haunting, especially the a cappella Niles number. The plain white sleeves have the artist, title and number out of 500 scrawled on 'em by Will Oldham himself.
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
SORRY.
A quietly-released single that is only being offered direct to stores (bypassing distros) at this time, this is the second Bonnie Princ Billy single from Will Oldham and company. Like the one before it (which we still have a few copies of), this is Oldham in a less abject, less stark phase, very pleasant to the ears. Buy now or cry later!
Not sure if they still do Peel Sessions now that John Peel is gone (R.I.P.), but some of our favorite recordings over the years were Peel Sessions (the Loop one comes to mind!). Almost any band you can think of from the last few decades probably ended up recording a Peel Session, and it probably ruled. Bands would record live, often trying new sounds, redoing old songs, whatever stuck their fancy at the time.
This new Bonnie 'Prince' Billy record is not in fact a new record, but instead collects some vintage Peel Sessions from back in the day. And finds Will Oldham, aka BPB, in fine fettle, that instantly recognizable creaky vocal warble crooning achingly over stripped down versions of Palace / Oldham / BPB songs, including some definite fan faves ("Trudy Dies", "Stable Will") as well as an amazing cover of "The Cross", from Sign 'O' The Times by Prince (the other Prince!), and goddamn if it doesn't sound like a Palace Brothers song proper. The instrumentation is mostly acoustic guitar, or low volume electric, with the occasional vocal harmonies, but really, the sound is super intimate, with a sort of back porch / campfire vibe but beautifully record. Absolutely essential listening for fans, and not a bad place to start for beginners too.
Upon reading the title of this new EP, we discover that ol' Mr. Oldham has once again deemed it necessary to alert us to the fact that he will be singing his songs. Thank you sir! Anyhoo, the title track, a sweet duet with Ms Marty Slayton, might already be familiar to BPB fans as it comes straight outta the centerpoint of BPB's most recent album Sings Greatest Palace Music. If you're not already acquainted with the tune, you should know it's a particularly lovely highlight of the album. The gracefully lilting second song "Pussyfooting" is characterized by some softly sputtering programmed beats, chamber-y strings and a rather abrupt fade-out finish. The third number, the oddly spelled "Blokbuster", is the most typical BPB tune of the three. Dour and downtrodden in the best possible way. Note: The cd's audio running time is just over twelve minutes, but you also get some bonus video treats too which may account for the discrepancy in the displayed running times on our computer versus our cd player.
Who can figure out Will Oldham? Certainly not us. What a bizarre career arc. Actor. Musician. Artist. Musician again. Recluse. Rock and roller. And everything in between. He seems like a really strange guy. With really strange ideas. But almost everything he attempts he pulls off, in a BIG way. And this latest endeavor is no different. Oldham, in his Bonnie Prince Billy persona, hires a crack pick-up band of professional Nashville session cats, and re-records classic Palace Brothers material, and turns his classic ramshackle, soul searching, Appalachian miserablism into slick, and surprisingly upbeat Sunset Boulevard, Byrds/Parsons style country rock! The playing is impeccable, obviously, with piano, pedal steel, mandolin, shuffling drums, mournful fiddles and some seriously sweet and twangy female backup vocals. Definitely a serious Byrds vibe. Some of the tracks retain their original darkness, and those are the ones that tend to sound the most like classic Palace, but most get a rollicking upbeat facelift. And as if to make up for it, Oldham's vocals are as wavery and on-the-verge-of-cracking as ever, like an old bluesman on his deathbed, barely able to whisper/croak out his last words. But it's just so awesome to hear these songs we've listened to hundreds of times over the last few years completely reinvented and reinvigorated. Speaking of reinvented and reinvigorated, check out the seriously sickly photo of Mr. Oldham on the back of the disc. Byram thinks they used the Photoshop 'sphere' filter to sort of make the bottom half of his face bubble out like he has a tumor or something. Weird. But what do you expect from such a weird guy!
It's pretty cool how the roles are reversed on this latest BPB single. Susanna K. Wallumrod aka Susanna & The Magical Orchestra has become well known for her breathtaking covers of everyone from Tom Petty, Roy Harper, Joy Division, Thin Lizzy, Prince, etc. She has also covered Will Oldham aka Bonnie Prince Billy, so it's awesome to see him return the favor covering two of HER songs on this brand new 7". Both tracks give BPB the opportunity to return to a much more stark and stripped down aesthetic, eschewing the more lush and fleshed out sound of his more recent recordings. We kind of love when he strips away lots of those layers, as it's the haunting quality of his playing and vocals and delivery that really made so many of us fall in love with his music in the first place. If you like your Will Oldham stark and rustic then this 7" has your name all over it!
Will Oldham fans have no shortage of offerings from their favorite prince as of late. This marks the third single released from his last full length The Letting Go. It includes one of the best songs from the album, "Strange Form Of Life", an early version of "The Seedling" as well as stripped down solo renditions of two of his older gems. The cd also includes a great video of "Strange Form Of Life" directed by Jennifer Parsons.
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy / Palace / Palace Brothers / Palace Music / Will Oldham fans... Here's a live one for ya! Summer In The Southeast features a heap of Bonnie 'Prince' Billy live recordings ranging from his downright bar room butt-kickers to his spartan hushed numbers. The eleventh and twelveth tracks give you a one-two punch of the two extremes. If you're at all acquainted with his music, you'll probably have heard many of these songs before. If you've no idea who the heck Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Palace, Palace Brothers, Palace Music and/or Will Oldham is, but are curious... well, this probably wouldn't be the best place to start (psst, check out Master & Everyone or Ease Down The Road or his collaboration with Matt Sweeney titled Superwolf!).
Will Oldham may have raised an eyebrow or two around here with his recent exploits musically cavorting... ahem, collaborating with the Tortoise gang (on The Brave And The Bold album), but with his new full length The Letting Go he's definitely back in his BPB saddle and riding his trademark lonesome trail in fine fashion. Withery heartfelt folk pop as only Lord William can do!
Wilding In The West, the follow up to his first live record, Summer In The South East, finds Prince Billy with full band at his side as they play lots of material from recent albums The Letting Go and Master And Everyone, recorded at shows throughout California during their 2007 tour. We love when the band gets down and dirty turning the usually quiet and folksy Bonnie Prince Billy into a rugged force to be reckoned with (check out the raw and rocking version of "Master And Everyone"!). A true troubadour and songsmith, Oldham demonstrates once again that his songs can take many different forms and can be interpreted many different ways. Along with some super charged versions of classic BPB songs there's also a really comfortable down home feeling to many of the tracks, letting the band show off their tight chops but play it laid back enough to allow the songs to travel well off the path when needed. This one's a Japanese import (hence the price tag) but luckily there is some cool packaging and photos that along with the great live performance will make bigtime Will Oldham fans want to add this to their collection for sure!
Not sure what it is exactly, but some of us just sort of gave up on Will Oldham a while back, Oldham in his Bonnie Prince Billy guise just didn't seem to do it for us anymore, sure we dug those first few BPB records, but our hearts always belonged to the pre-BPB Oldham project, the late great Palace Brothers and post Palace Brothers, it was just never the same. But this new one from Oldham has us wondering if we haven't been missing out, cuz this collection of songs is some of the prettiest, most heartfelt music we've heard from him in ages. And his singing sounds better than ever, having ditched that warbly creaking about to crack croon, for something more polished, still rough and ragged and a little raspy, but much more controlled, and less seemingly purposefully fragile. And the songs on this new record too, simple and spare, but also lush and lovely, sounding more like classic country/folk covers than originals, which is a testament to their power. The band too, understated, but powerful, with the female background vocals perfectly balancing Oldham's voice, and making these songs sound almost like spirituals, not to mention the warm whirr of the pump organ, and some deftly placed distorted guitars.
Listening to this, we can't help but think of Neil Young, or Townes Van Zandt, or any number of classic singer/songwriters, the same sort of hushed energy, the songs timeless, the performances effortless, but so imbued with true passion, darkly dolorous, haunting and utterly honest and heartfelt, and so good, it has us doubters headed back into Oldham's catalog to see if there's more stuff like this we may have been missing. SO recommended.
These keep flying out of here, but we finally have enough (at the moment) to list... For the first time perhaps since his early Palace Brothers days, Bonnie Prince Billy aka Will Oldham is self-releasing and self-distributing his latest record on cd, lp and cassette. Like our favorite Bonnie Prince Billy records, like the great Master and Everyone, this new release is beautifully intimate and spare. Using just his guitar and voice to get to the core of heartbreak and lament, his plainspoken delivery world-weary yet hopeful, getting right under the skin and close to the bone, like no one else can. Our new favorite BPB release in quite awhile.
Two stunning new songs from Bonnie Prince Billy and The Cairo Gang. "New Wonder" is a solemn and mournful tear jerker that ranks to the top of any of Will Oldham's most affecting tracks of all time and that's saying a lot! "Island Brothers" will be familiar sounding to anyone who has seen the band in the last year or so as it's become a staple of their live sets. With the profits of this record going to help in the efforts to get clean filtered water into Haiti, still struggling in the aftermath of the recent disaster, it's just further proof that Oldham is not just a class act, but still one of the best songwriters of his generation.
A must have for Oldham fans!
It's easy to take Will Oldham for granted at this point as he has become as prolific as he is talented, but when you can continually write and create such warm and wise music , well, then we're fine with the abundance of recent releases.
The Wonder Show Of The World might just be the most free flowing and affecting BPB album in a while. We're not exactly sure who/what the Cairo Gang is, but we're definitely enjoying their contribution. And we do know that long time contributor/collaborator and super talented guitarist Emmet Kelly (The Cairo Gang?) takes on a much bigger role than he has in the past. It's a way more subtle, subdued and minimal approach to production and song structure and we have to say we kind of love it this way. Sometimes the over-the-top instrumentation and full on country jams that have made up some of his recent releases takes away from the core of what makes Oldham's songwriting so intimate and special.
The Wonder Show Of The World finds Oldham getting back to that more sacred and refined sound. It's not about riffing on a certain genre (country, gospel, etc.) instead it's just about creating moving, emotional and haunting songs. At this point it's really not too far fetched to think of Oldham as possibly the closest thing to this generations Dylan, a storyteller who has found music as the best medium to share his gift of language and evoking emotion. Oldham fans are sure to love this and even those of us who had taken a little break from him are finding that this record is reeling us back into his world.
Now, given that I'm admittedly a little tired of Will Oldham, this new mini-album of his came as a delightful surprise. Oldham's rickety backporch warblings are wonderful, sure, but somehow, 2 or 3 albums worth of it is enough for me, and he's got 4 or 5
We bet the guys in bonus regret their choice of band names. You know: Is this that Bonus disc? Did you get the Bonus cd? What Bonus cd? The NEW Bonus cd. WHAT BONUS CD? Hee hee. You could get a serious noise rock Who's On First going. Anyway, this is actually pretty darn fantastic, and as with all Jyrk cd-r's it seems, SUPER LIMITED, already out of print, and we have the last 30. So again, act fast if you want one of these.
Slow buliding otherworldly shimmer, the sort of gorgeously delicate drone you want to go on forever and ever. Not rumbly or subsonic, or keening high end, this is warm and rich and dense and wraps your head in a big pillow of soft shimmering sound. So lovely. Comes in a sharp looking had painted sleeve. And again, when these are gone, they are gone for good!
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Finally, the first proper non-cd-r full length from these minimal dronesters and as you might expect it's more of the same, which is all we could possibly hope for. The same of course being thick coils of gloriously fuzzy drone, unfurling over the course of nine, twelve and fifteen minutes. Bonus are masters of the drone, but in their hands, the drone isn't something you just let drift, not some random sound object you create and then watch float weightlessly from your speakers. No, the drones of Bonus are living things, they have weight to them, they crackle with energy, squirming and twisting, thick frayed ropes of buzzing sound, like the sonic version of a downed electrical wire, or a hose with the water turned all the way up whipping wildly to and fro, spitting sparks, dangerous and unpredictable. The opening track is gorgeous, it's like Phill Niblock composing for heavy metal guitar, or like a SUNNO))) performance abandoned midway through, leaving just the guitars and amps to finish the show, letting gravity and temperature and air pressure determine the direction of the proceedings as much as the instruments or the volume or anything else. A strangely organic expression of distorted sound and sonic entropy. Awesome. The scond track is like a minimal stripped down version of the first, simple buzzing tones, muted and fuzzy, slowly shifting and beating against each other, a swirling static universe of colliding overtones. Like looking inside a drone, to see what makes it tick, millions of tiny Track 2's, shimmering and subtly reveberating, like microscopic little drone molecules. Track three goes even deeper, so all of those microscopic reverberations are viewed from the inside, a pulsing, throbbing, quivering forest of rapidly vibrating tendrils, trussed together into thick quivering bundles of drone, a swarming buzz, somewhere between the all out roaring buzz of the first track, and the minimal shimmer of the second. Absolutely fucking fabulous.
Totally gorgeous cover art too, Some super abstract Lichtenstein style carton art, printed in marron and black on a cool folding card stock sleeve.
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It's hard to review a record by the mysterious Bonus without mentioning their dubious choice of band name. Did you get that Bonus disc? Um, what bonus disc? You know, the whole Who's On First thing. This has only been eclipsed by a band we heard about recently called Merch. Nuff said.
Anyway, such levity is totally out of place in a review of -this- Bonus disc, a massive roiling, churning miasma of thick malevolent, corrosive fuzzed out drones. Huge and dense and multilayered, pulsing and swelling like something alive. Like the endless lull of the surf, if the waves were made up of huge bass speakers, buzzy synths and undulating electronic osscilations. Like the clang and clatter of industrial machinery, the buzz of airplanes flying overhead, the rumbling of construction work down the block, all timestretched into a soothing, swaying, soporific drone. Think Troum covering Wolf Eyes, or Andrew Chalk plays the Throbbing Gristle songbook. Really great!
Packaged in a handmade, hand embossed, spray painted plastic sleeve. Each disc individually stamped and numbered.
LIMITED TO 150 COPIES. WE ONLY HAVE 30!
A classic slasher from the eighties, The Boogeyman is crazy even by the standards of other classic B-movie horror flicks. The plot is confusing to say the least, childhood trauma, a young girl and her brother, a murdered mother, killed while having sex, a mute child grown up to be a knife hoarding mute, living with the seemingly well adjusted sister, terrifying reflections in mirrors, eventually painted black, a priest impaled by multiple blades, possession, levitation. It's actually a pretty fun movie, but it is NUTS.
The soundtrack is a doozy though, the classic sort of Carpenter style creep fest of the time, actually quite reminiscent of what might be THEE greatest horror score EVER (and one that has inexplicably not been reissued yet), Phantasm!
Composer Tim Krog offers up ominous sprawls of squiggly synths, dense swaths of kosmische creepiness, twisted sound effects, some Halloween like melodic themes, moody organs, dark drones and moody ambience, for a batshit movie, the score is actually pretty fantastic, lovely and terrifying in equal measure, swirling atmospherics laced with cool backwards psychedelia, stately minimal melancholia, some far out WTF electronics, and a main melodic refrain that after a couple listens could definitely join the horror score pantheon of classics like Friday The 13th, Halloween and again, Phantasm.
SUPER DUPER LIMITED!!!
And now One Way Static brings us a vinyl version of this killer (literally) soundtrack...
A classic slasher from the eighties, The Boogeyman is crazy even by the standards of other classic B-movie horror flicks. The plot is confusing to say the least, childhood trauma, a young girl and her brother, a murdered mother, killed while having sex, a mute child grown up to be a knife hoarding mute, living with the seemingly well adjusted sister, terrifying reflections in mirrors, eventually painted black, a priest impaled by multiple blades, possession, levitation. It's actually a pretty fun movie, but it is NUTS.
The soundtrack is a doozy though, the classic sort of Carpenter style creep fest of the time, actually quite reminiscent of what might be THEE greatest horror score EVER (and one that has inexplicably not been reissued yet), Phantasm!
Composer Tim Krog offers up ominous sprawls of squiggly synths, dense swaths of kosmische creepiness, twisted sound effects, some Halloween like melodic themes, moody organs, dark drones and moody ambience, for a batshit movie, the score is actually pretty fantastic, lovely and terrifying in equal measure, swirling atmospherics laced with cool backwards psychedelia, stately minimal melancholia, some far out WTF electronics, and a main melodic refrain that after a couple listens could definitely join the horror score pantheon of classics like Friday The 13th, Halloween and again, Phantasm.
