Review Summary: Quietly brilliant, in fits and skirmishes
Thank God, in the grand scheme of things, that Bonny “Prince” Billy’s project has moved beyond the endless dark night of the soul that was
I See A Darkness, otherwise known as the one Will Oldham album everyone’s heard. I don’t know how much life could sustain a person who’d been churning out endless versions of that album’s title track for more than a couple decades and wouldn’t want to know anything of the mental state of someone who could keep that mood going that long.
Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You finds Oldham settled into a moody sort of wistfulness, a matured, serene tranquility made unquiet by the occasional glance down the cemetery road. And while its sparseness and serenity give Oldham’s lyrical ability ample room to shine, and while there are quite a few moments that are up with the best that he’s ever done up to this point, there are also a few too many stretches of time in which the songs themselves don’t have the kind of weight necessary to justify the album’s skeletal qualities.
Well though, isn’t Like It Or Not just one of the best openers Will Oldham’s put together in a solid few years, and doesn’t it just lay out everything that you might expect from the rest of the album? It’s an intimate mood-setting, guitar and Will, a voice backing, a guest instrument, violin, saxophone, cello all popping in with a warm, improvisatory quality, the softened, warm friendliness of an age that recognizes its own mortality. That’s the mood that gives the album much of its gravitas, and while Oldham’s long been a poet who took a sort of perverse delight in staring death right in the face while sucking on a bottle of something cheap and vile it now feels like Will’s more concerned with the little intimacies of life and living, the haunted qualities of his music now quieted and directed towards brighter pathways. Odes to music and lovemaking and all the bearing through the bitterness that Will’s been making so uniquely his for so many years at this point are directed into a more introverted, quiet voice here, not so much that Will’s trying to play to the coffeshop crowd here by quieting down and mellowing out, but as if Will’s trying to make his words somehow a little more urgent by making his audience lean in to catch them.
So what must I make of this bare-bones production here? Everything sounds intimate, clear, raw and unvarnished; solid, honest and sparse as a piece of shaker furniture. All the little guest parts, the vocal harmonies, the raw saxophone solo on Behold! Beheld!, it all speaks of little more than a studio space and the voices filling it. It’s borderline skeletal in places, and it does its job of putting Oldham’s raspy, prematurely aged whisper and his solidly constructed lyrics splashed with his moribund navel-gazing at the front and center. In that sense, like many of “Prince” Billy’s releases since
I See A Darkness, the sound of the album, the sense of space it carries with it, play well to Oldham’s strengths, and to the semi-whispered wisdom imparted from one of contemporary folks great lyricists.
Sax solo or warm organs notwithstanding,
Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You makes for some of Oldham’s most ready-made acoustic guitar guy songwriting decisions to date, all very much anchored into the softly-strummed folk guitar balladry that he’s more or less been plying for most of his career. This works to its fullest effect on the quiet little metaphorical personality fable of Willows, Pines and Oaks. Then, just as things run the risk of getting too treacly, the album then takes an unexpected, and welcome plunge into fog-and-doom atmospherics with the morbid Trees of Hell, a gloomy, semi-nightmare of nature taking its bloody revenge. It's a little sign of Oldham's knack for expressing something a little grotesque but honestly, the album is otherwise so indebted to its most minimal elements that it runs the risk of becoming monotonous quite a few times. Thank god then, for the lyrical gems that Oldham seems to be a bottomless mine of, but I kept looking wistfully back to all the dramatic dynamics of
The Letting Go, possibly Oldham’s most immediately rewarding album.
Don’t think though, that there aren’t ample rewards to be found here though. If Will’s aim is to impart something a little more conducive to a life well lived than he may have on past albums, he’s taking that flag and waving it in our faces with a few well-turned phrases and a handful of eminently comfortable ballads. And the moody, string-led minor-key chamber piece of Blood of the Wine along with droning disquiet of Trees of Hell create just enough spice to allow some goodwill for the utterly barebones, sweetly inconsequential lyric showcases of Sing Them Down Together and Kentucky is Water. If it's not as immediate of a reward as his greatest work, it’s still a wonderfully intimate piece of work that allows just as much for close attention as for a pleasant slipping by.
