Bonnie Prince Billy: I see a starkness

Photo by the inimitable Michael Gallacher

I reviewed Bonnie 'Prince' Billy last month, having pitched the show to The Fly's live editor because I thought I'd get to take my American friend with me. He'd given me a copy of his 'The Letting Go' album for my birthday and I'd struggled to get into it after a few plays. We'd enjoyed a show by the preposterous roots rocker Steve Earle some months before, so I planned this as a good follow up. He left the country a few weeks before the gig and I was only given a single guestlist place anyway, so I went alone.

I was ill at the time and felt like I was going to pass out by the end of the gig but nothing could detract from its brilliance. Not even the Tom Green-lookalike Australian back-packer who stood next to me wearing a red velvet pimp hat and kept breaking out into bouts of ironic New Age dancing. Or his shrieking Australian back-packer girlfriend who talked all the way through the set, insisting that everyone should just fucking chill out whenever she was shushed. I appreciate Oldham's recordings a lot more now that I've seen him live and the aforementioned gift has become a firm favourite.

Note how I awkwardly skirt around the fact that I don't know the name of his multi-instrumentalist colleague. Also, since writing this I've discovered that Angel Olson is a really excellent solo artist in her own right.

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy

Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow

29/1/12

****

Will Oldham has recorded under various guises since the early nineties, his releases generally characterised by three different moods. There's the rough, lo-fi Americana favoured by his early work, the stark tones of his most acclaimed LPs and the camp-fire folksiness heard in recent years. Exceptional as his studio output has been, it has seldom sounded as vibrant as his performance tonight.

The Bonnie Prince's current configuration finds him sharing three-part harmonies with Angel Olson and Emmet Kelly, both of whom appeared on last year's 'Wolfroy Goes to Town' album. In contrast to that record's prevailing airiness, their singing tonight is so full-blooded that morbid songs are rendered as perversely rousing anthems, a jaunty 'I See a Darkness' being a case in point. They may sugar-coat his material to an extent, but the pair prove a perfect foil for Oldham. While he can undoubtedly hold a note himself, and frequently does, many of the evening's most compelling moments occur when the duo's accompaniment drops out, exposing the untutored intensity of the frontman's vocals. Often the lines that he attacks solo are some of his most personal. On the opening 'Lion Lair', his colleagues even seem quietly uncomfortable as he delivers a passionate sermon on gripping shafts and cupping balls. Whether he's being profane or portentous, he exhibits a degree of poker-faced conviction rarely seen on stage and the audience responds with reverence.

Kelly shares guitar duties with Oldham for the duration of the show, providing a rootsy backdrop for most of the material. A multi-instrumentalist, meanwhile, sits stage-right underscoring each song with well-judged layers of piano, autoharp and harmonium. While most in attendance will leave in awe of Oldham's presence or Olson and Kelly's vigour, there's no way the performance would have proved quite so potent, were it not for the beautifully restrained embellishments buried in the mix.

Lewis Porteous