Pitchfork
Review:
Various Artists:
I Am a Cold Rock. I Am Dull Grass: A Tribute to the Music of Will
Oldham
[Tract; 2004]
Rating: 7.8
In early 2004, Will Oldham released a tribute album to himself,
the sprawling and divisive Bonnie "Prince" Billy Sings
Greatest Palace Music. Oldham's history of shape-shifting (his
aliases to date include Palace, Palace Music, Palace Songs, Palace
Brothers, Will Oldham, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, and the
simplified Bonny Billy) has always encouraged a certain amount
of stylistic diversity, allowing him the freedom to craft new
homes for his thin, defeated yelps and quasi-absurdist prose.
Sometimes, his goods are framed in full-band noise (Palace Music's
Viva Last Blues); other times, they're spare and minimal (Palace
Brothers' spectacular Days in the Wake). Still, Greatest Palace
Music saw Oldham's tendency towards reinvention circle in on itself,
the ultimate expression of meta-reflection: Oldham performing
his older material under the guise of his contemporary alter-ego,
with a crowd of Nashville session musicians adding sickly sax
solos and slide guitar.
Just months later, Tract Records has released a slightly more
conventional tribute record: I Am a Cold Rock. I Am a Dull Grass.
features covers of classic Oldham cuts voiced by prominent indie
artists (Iron & Wine, Calexico, Pinetop Seven, Sorry About
Dresden, Scout Niblett, and Adrian Crowley appear) and a slew
of lesser-known Oldham admirers who were hand-picked from the
label's open call for submissions. And since most of this two-disc
collection's material playfully imitates Oldham's trademark spare-and-acoustic
style, it seems likely to introduce fans of the Oldham aesthetic
to some impressive new voices, including Jeffrey Luck Lucas and
Diana Darby.
Of course, it's the more recognizable names that triumph. Calexico's
take on Days in the Wake's "I Send My Love to You" is
a stunning reanimation. Its lilting pedal steel, violin, light
percussion, and boy/girl harmonies puff up Oldham's vocals-and-guitar
lament, adding heft and gently smoothing over all of Oldham's
scaly admissions-- a cool hand brushing bits of hair from a sticky
brow. Fundamentally, Calexico's approach is not really so different
from what Oldham himself attempted on Greatest Palace Music: harsh,
abrasive intensity traded for a soft, layered beauty. Iron &
Wine's cover of "We All, Us Three, Will Ride" builds
on the Viva Last Blues cut with gently shaken handheld percussion,
and Sam Beam's hushed, melodic vocals smoothing out Oldham's Appalachian
crackle.
In true Oldham spirit, however, the safest contributions to I
Am a Cold Rock are also the greatest missteps-- Pale Horse and
Rider's studied "Work Hard/Play Hard" follows the Palace
version too closely, ultimately missing the dirt-road recklessness
that made the original so jarring and addictive. Likewise, Rivulets'
melancholy strumming gives "You Will Miss Me When I Burn"
a markedly suburban feel, with vocalist Nathan Amundson's plaintive
perfect pitch evoking none of the stewing emotion of the Days
in the Wake original.
The unexpected cohesiveness of I Am a Cold Rock-- which, however
inadvertently, strips away all accoutrements, lineup changes,
and other superficial fixes-- reveals Oldham as a surprisingly
consistent songwriter, despite all his coy tricks and outfit-changes.
In the past, Oldham's skills have always been at least partially
obscured by the tenuousness of his vocals, the sparseness of his
arrangements, and the full-wank sprawl of his bandmates. I Am
a Cold Rock, like Greatest Palace Music, isolates and highlights
Oldham-as-scribe, dragging his compositions into new, unbroken
light.
- Amanda Petrusich, August 17, 2004
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