Bonnie "Prince" Billy keeps it weird in 'Singer's Grave'

Bonnie “Prince” Billy (Drag City Records, 2014)

“Keep Louisville weird” is a slogan you commonly see around the Falls of the Ohio, on bumper stickers, T-shirts, and coffee mugs. It’s a sort of antimarketing campaign to promote the city’s locally owned businesses. Well, over two decades and some 30 album releases, Louisville’s own Will Oldham (aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy) has done his part to maintain his hometown’s quota of eccentricity. This album is representative of Oldham’s willful obliviousness to music biz conventions.

Despite his jaunty moniker, his music is persistently rough hewn, with moaning lap steel, banjo, and ragged electric guitar. It is often morose, in the Appalachian death ballad tradition, and his keening vocals are appropriately high and lonesome. Imagine Ralph Stanley singing on a Tom Waits album, and you’ll get the picture. However, Singer’s Grave is one of Oldham’s more accessible efforts. He sweetens his sound with some notable Nashville session help, including the gospel singing McCrary Sisters. But then, on “We Are Unhappy,” he matches the McCrarys’ joyful noise with a chorus that goes, “Nothing is better, nothing is best, we are unhappy, we are unblest.” On “Quail and Dumplings,” starving mountain folk dream of the title delicacy, and the music promises their deliverance, but the listener suspects the feast will be neither in nor of this world.

Along the way in his so-called career, Oldham has occasionally brushed up against mainstream recognition. He started as a 17-year-old actor in John Sayles’ Matewan. Johnny Cash immortalized his song “I See a Darkness” on one album in his American series. A few years later the New Yorker did a profile. But, through thick and thin, Oldham has stayed with the same tiny independent record label, and remains an artist deeply committed to a personal vision of American music.

I say, support Bonnie “Prince” Billy, and help him keep America weird.

This review appeared in the January 2015 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 80, No. 1, page 42).