Friendship. Concord. Openness and generosity. If folk is an innately community-minded music, then these are surely its cornerstones, not only practically but idealistically, too. They’re certainly qualities that have shaped Will Oldham’s career of 30-odd years. Though the title of his debut album may have conjured an enigmatic loner squaring up to life’s bleak truth, possibly from a backwoods shack in Kentucky, There Is No One What Will Take Care Of You was recorded with Slint’s Brian McMahan and Britt Walford, among others and released under the name Palace Brothers. In the four years following, Oldham teamed up with countless different musicians, using variations on the “Palace” theme. Despite a self-confessed tendency toward isolation, he’d started as he meant to go on.
So to his umpteenth album as Bonnie “Prince” Billy, which follows 2023’s endearingly down-home Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You. It sees Oldham’s collaborative spirit fully – though differently – charged and his hermetic questing further settled as a mix of compassion, lived wisdom and domestic contentment. None of which precludes existential dark clouds. It also sees him drawing heavily on Nashville’s talent pool and working with a producer, David Ferguson, for only the second time. Oldham has said that when he listens to The Purple Bird, “oftentimes I can’t help but laugh in wonder that life allowed me to participate in such a thing.” That joy and wonderment are part of the listening pleasure of these dozen songs, which lean heavily into country music and are relaxed about showing their variegated roots, while cutting simple, heartfelt emotion with daffy humour.
The set grew out of writing sessions in Nashville – another first for Oldham – with half a dozen country notables, among them the heavyweights Pat McLaughlin and John Anderson, one of his vocal heroes. Recording was done locally, with players of Ferguson’s choosing, while half the tracks feature only vocals from Oldham. Though they channel the spirits of Merle Haggard (his North Star), Buck Owens, Michael Hurley and Don Williams, Oldham’s idiosyncratic expression is never eclipsed. “Turned To Dust (Rollin’ On)” opens, its lazy, clip-clop rhythm and sheeting melody carrying a philosophical message that’s common to country music – since our time here is short, “can’t we all just get along as life keeps rolling on”. It’s a rather sombre start, a mood underscored by later mention of those “tempted by the lure of a liar/Who preys upon the foolish and the weak”, which may or may not refer to Trump. However, it ends on a positive, personal note: “If we rely on love to lift us higher/Things’ll be all right for you and me”.
That sentiment is threaded through the record: the idea of cleaving to what’s right, avoiding wrong and focusing on life’s micro pleasures – for the author, swimming, dancing and singing – rather than the macro horror. “London May” follows. Originally written by Oldham for a movie starring his friend, the titular musician/actor, it dims the mood further, ranging over long, dark nights of the soul, the need to take a stand whatever the consequences and the final dying of the light. Similarly, “Sometimes It’s Hard To Breathe”, with its air of Celtic-folk mysticism and mesh of acoustic and steel guitars, has him wondering, “For a while, can it all make sense?/For a while, can this endless life seem fine?”, given that “truth [is] forever on the scaffold/Wrong forever on the throne”.
Uplift is provided by “Tonight With The Dogs I’m Sleeping”, a freewheeling take on that (dubious) country-folk staple, the comic narrative about a drunk man fearing the wrath of his woman after a boys’ night out. Oldham keeps his touch light and knowingly affectionate – the hokey side of tradition might demand a howl in the chorus but he demurs. There’s more drollery, albeit of a less straightforward kind, in “Guns Are For Cowards”, a rambunctious knee-slapper with accordion runs and oompah trombone, which jokily muses on where’s best on the body to shoot someone dead before making the entirely serious point that “guns are for cowards and cowards created by fear and withholding of love”. “The Water’s Fine” is driven by an acoustic hillbilly chug with a pull-back where honky-tonk piano and fiddle kick in, over which Oldham, in fine, sweet voice, uses swimming as a metaphor for setting down one’s load and jumping right into life. Water is a recurring theme on the record, as with the alluringly close-mic’d, Southern-soul number that is “New Water” and “Downstream”, a sober eco lament which nods to Haggard’s “The Winds Of Change” and features Uilleann pipes alongside John Anderson’s deep voice.
The Purple Bird is a consummate listen-through that makes highlights hard to pick but “Boise, Idaho”, a yearning beauty with a fine arrangement and hints of Glen Campbell, is one. The others are the aforementioned “New Water” and a cover of Elbernita “Twinkie” Clark’s “Is My Living In Vain”, written for The Clark Sisters. Though he doesn’t change the lyrics, Oldham reworks the organ-hammered gospel hit as an exquisitely lonesome call for both artistic and existential reassurance, sounding by turns anguished and emphatically positive as melodic strands gather like storm clouds. “No, no, of course not, it is not all in vain,” he soothes himself, though you’d imagine a catalogue of 20-plus well received albums, some rapturously, would be evidence enough. Less cynically, the underplayed richness of The Purple Bird and the obvious delight Oldham took in its making proves that in his long battle between collaboration and isolation, the former has won hands down. It’s now his natural habitat.
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