Bill Callahan Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle (Drag City) £11.74
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy Beware (Domino) £11.74
Will Oldham - aka Bonnie "Prince" Billy - must kick himself for having penned "I See a Darkness". Covered by Johnny Cash before his death, Oldham's unofficial anthem makes plain what much of his output has since sought to obscure - that Oldham is a bard constantly prodding at the dark underbelly of things. Known for years as Smog, Bill Callahan is Oldham's closest rival, a fellow traveller with a deadpan baritone and a comparable fascination with the bosky undergrowth of the human heart.
Both Oldham and Callahan established their reputations more than a decade ago as bleak, lo-fi minimalists spinning folk music into awkward shapes. Both men have now gone gloriously maximal, putting out lush albums whose discomfiting themes come draped in some of the most elegant music of their careers. Rarely does an Oldham or Callahan album pass without praise, but Callahan's 13th and Oldham's 17th (or so) efforts are special.
Callahan's last record was infused with the good cheer of his then-liaison with Joanna Newsom; a lightness lingers on in the arrangements on Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle. The record's typically gnomic title disguises Callahan's directness. "Faith/Void" is a warm elegy to atheism while "Jim Cain" ponders the mystery of ordinary things; as ever, totem animals look on as Callahan probes carnivorous emotions.
Oldham's first effort, as Palace Brothers, was 1993's There Is no one What Will Take Care of You. "There is no one who will take care of me," he muses on "I Don't Belong to Anyone", gnawing at a familiar bone of "princely" contention - isolation versus human engagement. Although the jovial opener "Beware Your Only Friend" counsels against best buddies, and "Afraid Ain't Me" finds him defiantly alone, Oldham tips towards companionship here. A cast of Nashville instrumentalists makes the case for Oldham as a country star rather than an alt-country one. Fiddles, pedal steel guitar and even flutes bring stunning ensemble counterpoints to Oldham's lonely furrows.
As outgoing as their predecessors have often been introverted, Callahan's Eagle and Oldham's Beware are career landmarks.
