Another of these is Mickey Newbury's "I Came to Hear the Music," which opens the set and is one of the songwriter's best-known tunes. In a version that stays faithful to the melody, Weeks adds some of the soft touches inherent in the original production, and collaborative tune "I've Seen It All" could have been a Oldham is suddenly very old, looking back on a lifetime of regret. It's pretty, tender, and drenched in both love and grief. Baird's sweet, out-of-time backing vocal underscores the lines with the sense of time's passage. Glenn Danzig's "Am I Demon?" feels like it belongs right where it is and seems more like Oldham's tune than its author's. The male-centered darkness in the Björk/Thom YorkePalace Brothers tune, but Weeks keeps that from happening by texturing the space and separation between lead and backing vocal and some spidery reverbed electric guitars. The Phil Ochs tune "My Life" seems to fall a bit flat here -- not much is added, but its real power seems diminished despite that it is obviously the hinge on which the entire EP turns. The lone original here, "I'm Loving the Street," is upbeat by comparison. Its folksy old-time jaunt offers no regrets for anything or anyone who has passed into history. There is only the present. The R. Kelly tune "The World's Greatest" is a different song here, as one might expect, designed as an Appalachian ballad that could have come from anytime, anywhere, but is rooted in the present only by the presence of a ghostly electric guitar. The melody is stretched but recognizable -- barely -- and the true poetry in Kelly's words comes falling out of the mouth of Oldham like clear water from a fountain. This is a solid, less dramatic, but no less interesting -- and in places even compelling -- momentary stopgap for Oldham. To be sure, his fans will certainly want to check this out, but so will anyone interested in the interpretive possibilities of song as a living entity independent of performance.Thursday 20 December 2007
Bonnie Prince Billy - Ask Forgiveness
Another of these is Mickey Newbury's "I Came to Hear the Music," which opens the set and is one of the songwriter's best-known tunes. In a version that stays faithful to the melody, Weeks adds some of the soft touches inherent in the original production, and collaborative tune "I've Seen It All" could have been a Oldham is suddenly very old, looking back on a lifetime of regret. It's pretty, tender, and drenched in both love and grief. Baird's sweet, out-of-time backing vocal underscores the lines with the sense of time's passage. Glenn Danzig's "Am I Demon?" feels like it belongs right where it is and seems more like Oldham's tune than its author's. The male-centered darkness in the Björk/Thom YorkePalace Brothers tune, but Weeks keeps that from happening by texturing the space and separation between lead and backing vocal and some spidery reverbed electric guitars. The Phil Ochs tune "My Life" seems to fall a bit flat here -- not much is added, but its real power seems diminished despite that it is obviously the hinge on which the entire EP turns. The lone original here, "I'm Loving the Street," is upbeat by comparison. Its folksy old-time jaunt offers no regrets for anything or anyone who has passed into history. There is only the present. The R. Kelly tune "The World's Greatest" is a different song here, as one might expect, designed as an Appalachian ballad that could have come from anytime, anywhere, but is rooted in the present only by the presence of a ghostly electric guitar. The melody is stretched but recognizable -- barely -- and the true poetry in Kelly's words comes falling out of the mouth of Oldham like clear water from a fountain. This is a solid, less dramatic, but no less interesting -- and in places even compelling -- momentary stopgap for Oldham. To be sure, his fans will certainly want to check this out, but so will anyone interested in the interpretive possibilities of song as a living entity independent of performance.
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