19th September - Bonnie "Prince" Billy's The Letting Go

Artist – Album: Bonnie “Prince” Billy – The Letting Go

Released:  19^th September 2006

Sounds Like:  “First chill, then stupor, then the letting go”

In dark, dark America, there is a dark, dark town. And in the dark, dark town, there is a dark, dark street. And in the dark, dark street, there is a dark, dark house. And in the dark, dark house…Bonnie “Prince” Billy lives!

Bonnie “Prince” Billy, a.k.a Will Oldham, inhabits the blackest corner of America; a place of perpetual fear and nightmares. It’s from this underworld that he conjured up his masterpiece, 1999’s I See A Darkness. But it seems that even in when you’re in the bleakest areas love comes to you. The Letting Go is arguably his lightest album to date, a strange album that still contains his signature quivering vocals but is comfortingly supported by the beautiful voice of collaborator Dawn McCarthy of Faun Fables. Even the scarier tracks, such as ‘Cursed Sleep’ and ‘No Bad News’ (“Something bad happens and a lot of people go bad themselves, that's how awful it is”), find redemption in their tribulations – The curse of unrequited love in ‘Cursed Sleep’ is overcome by dreams, and the beautiful coda at the end of ‘No Bad News’ is damn near joyful and seems to quash the something bad that happened.

Some songs, such as ‘Love Comes to Me’ and ‘Wai’, have gorgeous lyrics, sometimes battered and beaten but still full of love; some merely sound brighter, disguising their real intentions – ‘Cold & Wet’, ‘The Seedling’. Throughout there is a more assured deftness of touch and a barely perceptible softening of tone. I See a Darkness remains the highlight of his prolific, fantastic career, but The Letting Go runs it close.

Albumaday... rating: 7/10

1.       Love Comes to Me – 4:31

2.       Strange Form of Life – 3:46

3.       Wai – 3:37

4.       Cursed Sleep – 5:35

5.       No Bad News – 4:45

6.       Cold & Wet – 2:21

7.       Big Friday – 2:43

8.       Lay and Love – 3:50

9.       The Seedling – 4:36

10.   Then the Letting Go – 5:19

11.   God’s Small Song – 4:05

12.   I Called You Back – 7:53 

Listen to ‘Strange Form of Life’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsQ8TqXr7B0

Also released on 19^th September:

1988: Cocteau  Twins – Blue Bell Knoll

Also released on 19^th September:

1988: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Tender Prey

Also released on 19^th September:

2006: Lupe Fiasco – Food & Liquor

7th March - Neko Case's Fox Confessor Brings the Flood

Artist – Album: Neko Case – Fox Confessor Brings the Flood

Released:  7^th March 2006

Sounds Like: Our home and native land

Over the last decade or so, Canadian music has been enjoying something of a renaissance, a growing upsurge in the number of exciting, cool and influential bands taking up the mantle of Joni Mitchell and Neil Young and vastly at odds with the more recent purveyors of the Canuck sound such as Bryan Adams, Celine Dion and Alanis Morrisette. Whereas at the turn of the millennium it was Sum 41 and Avril Lavigne who lived it up C-country style, it was thankfully a different group of groups - Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene and Wolf Parade to name a few - who kept the ball rolling, eh.

Neko Case herself isn’t actually from Canada – she hails from Virginia – but she first rose to prominence in the Vancouver based supergroup The New Pornographers, certainly one of the best bands anywhere in the last 20 years. There she teamed up with an indie rock collective (also featuring the previously blogged aboot Destroyer aka Dan Bejar) who harnessed her songwriting skills and beguiling, distinctive vocals to create sparkling indie rock. Solo, the tempo is down and the songs are less hook-laden but her talent for pop craft and maximisation of her brilliant voice remain as good as ever.

Fox Confessor Brings the Flood is widely considered to be Case’s finest individual hour. It’s a consistently strong set speckled with a few outstanding gems. ‘Star Witness’ has a shimmering beauty, surprisingly being about witnessing a car crash. ‘John Saw That Number’ sounds ancient and olde worlde.  Worth a listen buddy. (I’m not your buddy, friend. He’s not your friend, guy. I’m not your guy, buddy...)

Albumaday... rating: 8/10

1.   Margaret vs. Pauline – 2:52

2.       Star Witness – 5:16

3.       Hold On, Hold On – 2:46

4.       A Widow’s Toast – 1:36

5.       That Teenage Feeling – 2:42

6.       Fox Confessor Brings the Flood – 2:42

7.       John Saw That Number – 4:06

8.       Dirty Knife – 3:18

9.       Lion’s Jaws – 2:28

10.     Maybe Sparrow – 2:37

11.     At Last – 1:35

12.     The Needle Has Landed – 3:45

Listen to ‘Star Witness’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi6keFpm-BY

Also released on the 7^th March:

1975: David Bowie – Young Americans

Also released on the 7^th March:

2006: Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - Etiquette