Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Master And Everyone

The historical record would argue that almost nothing I have to say about Will Oldham, and his various incarnations, should be believed.

Years ago I reviewed an early Palace release for Spin, and while I can’t remember which record it was, I know the review was a glowing bit of work-for-hire. Little enough had come my way then (say, Mazzy Star, or Mark Lanegan, both of which remain fond memories), that played so elegantly with the roar of silence, and Palace clearly and distinctly drew from a rural, country tradition. Both of which seemed like good ideas.

A while later I lasted half a set in a crowded club, for none of us had heard the like, and we all had to see. Oldham, the lead singer and provocateur of Palace, spent the whole evening dodging a solitary spotlight. Then Allison Stewart interviewed him for these pages, and he spoke at some length of an imaginary dog.

Finally, he said this in a December 1998 edition of Time Out New York: “No Depression seems like a culturalist, racist magazine to me, about a certain kind of white music.” We have not had occasion to write about Mr. Oldham’s varied exploits since.

He’s an odd duck, an ex-actor who keeps adopting new musical personae, aggressively passive aggressive. And I have come not to like him; that is, not to like his work, to feel violated by all the artifice with which he surrounds ostensibly artifice-free music, to mistrust his motives. This is a problem, when the singer’s principal illusion is intimacy, and it is especially a music critic’s problem, separating the artist from the art.

So perhaps I shouldn’t be believed, but Master And Everyone is, as advertised, a beautiful piece of work. Produced in Nashville by Mark Nevers (an early V-Roy whose own band, the Nevers, recorded an album Sire never released), it has a delicate, full sound, Oldham’s voice often leavened by Marty Slayton’s gentle harmonies.

If he is to be believed, Master And Everyone is a meditation on life, how it might best be lived, and with whom. If he’s not to be believed (the cover photo — which suggests a 19th-century fanatic — and his current stage name leave these issues open to question), it’s still one hell of a performance.

The songs are, at last, not self-conscious sketches, intentionally roughed up a bit so as to be taken as spontaneous utterances. These are songs, carefully, adroitly written — polished, even — and set simply amid well-played music. He sings of life, love, solitude and faith, and quite possibly has a few worthwhile things to say on those subjects. He may even mean what he says.