Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy at Variety Playhouse Fri., May 29
Monday, June 1st, 2009
Bonnie “Prince” Billy played an incredible show at the Variety Playhouse Friday night. It was a long, stark show that encompassed songs such as “You Can’t Hurt Me Now” and “I Am Goodbye” from Will Oldham’s latest album Beware, as well as older Palace songs like “Gulf Shores.” Mr. Oldham has come a long way on the journey that has led him from the warbling and primitive days of singing his hazy and somewhat deranged Palace songs, to the more complicated numbers on Beware. This transformation has been apparent for a long time now, but the band he has assembled for this latest offering is one of his strongest lineups yet. There’s good chemistry on stage, and even when it seemed like Oldham’s voice was about to go astray and lead him down some twisted path into the yodeling ether, the band reined him right back in.
The music ebbed and flowed between intense bouts of loud and quiet, drawing out sparse rounds of baroque discomfort and peaks of chiming and spectral mountain music. Violin player Cheyenne Mize was the angelic focal point of the stage as she stood as a sweet and restrained counterpart to Oldham’s presence.
With Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Oldham is a musical stylist to be sure. At times the band would drop undeniably compelling songs. In the moment, “I Am Goodbye” takes on a timeless and much more robust quality, like a graceful revision of Willie Nelson’s trucker lament, “On the Road Again.” At other times Oldham milks the long and bucolic textures, riffing simply and steadily on just a few chords. And with two drummers, two guitars, a stand-up bass and violin, those few simple chords grind with heavenly and hypnotic intonations in a set of songs that leaves you wondering if you should feel happy or sad, but ecstatic nonetheless.
More photos from the show after the jump.
(Photos by Mark Andrews)
