Bonnie Billy

Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You is a tale as old as time. It’s an album. Its songs and music are by and for people together. For listening together. Before it gets too late. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy stands at the nexus of all the kinds of music he can summon, with friends, with family and community. All roads roll though him. There can be no holding back. A million billion moments are on the line. He’s gonna tell us about a world…

Bonny sings Susanna, to simply try and save the world. "Sonata Dwarf Mix Cosmos is an old companion of his and with the Chijimi house band +1 they bring it all back home again, this time to the space in Bonny’s place. “As other practitioners are leaving the room in favor of novel forms of recording and distro and consumption, PALACE, fantastical and real structures and practices. Like we are allowed into the museum at night. We can make a great essentially live record with great songs and great players because nobody else is? ‘Wolf Of The Cosmos’… is about, as much as anything, direct engagement with recorded music. So step right up to the replicant.” Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy is joined by musicians Emmet Kelly (bass guitar, voice, acoustic guitar), Cheyenne Mize (violin, slide ukulele, voice), Chris Rodahaffer (banjo, voice, acoustic guitar) and Elsa Madeline Oldham (juice harp)."

Where once was Superwolf, now roam Superwolves, the new album and demon spawn of Matt Sweeney and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy.

When Nathan Salsburg’s daughter was a baby, he often sang her to sleep in a rocking chair. At one point, he remembered a song he had taught himself as a teenager: “The Evidence” by Lungfish, the Maryland band who coined a singular brand of post-punk in the 90s and 00s. Salsburg realized he could play the guitar part with one hand, singing while holding Talya in his other arm. Though the original version of “The Evidence” is only five minutes long, it’s essentially a repetitive mantra, so Salsburg could extend it as long as he wanted–10 minutes, 20 minutes, even an hour. “It was therapeutic and calming and just lovely for me,” he says.

Bonnie Prince Billy - Best Troubador (2017) {Drag City WIGCD405}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC (tracks)+CUE+LOG -> 268 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 132 Mb
Full Artwork @ 600 dpi (jpg) -> 84 Mb | 5% repair rar
© 2017 Drag City / Domino Recording | WIGCD405
Folk / Folk Rock / Country Rock

Will Oldham is a superior songwriter and vocalist when he wants to be, but there's just enough of a willful persona to his work as Bonnie "Prince" Billy and within the Palace rubric that it's hard to tell when he's being serious and when he's pulling his audience's collective leg, even when his work is good. One of the things that makes Best Troubador something truly special is that, more than nearly all of Oldham's work to date, he's playing straight throughout, and for a good reason.

Bonnie “Prince” Billy stays busy - in the past five years he has released albums of previously-recorded songs by Susanna Wallumrod, Mekons, Merle Haggard; even himself, and a collaborative record with Bitchin Bajas. The only thing he hasn't done is a new album of Bonny originals - in case you weren't counting, 2011's Wolfroy Goes To Town was the last one. That's from the first half of the Obama presidency!