Album Review: Bonnie 'Prince' Billy And The Cairo Gang - The Wonder Show Of The World
- Written by Tom Bolton
The absurdly talented Will Oldham exists in relation to the collaborators who provide him with the shifting identities that drive his music. He’s made fine albums as Palace Songs/Music/Brothers, as Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, with Matt Sweeney, Dawn McCarthy, Alex Neilson and the Picket Line. He’s covered his own songs as though he’d never heard them before, and released a particularly eccentric set of 70s rock covers with Tortoise. That last outing aside, he’s barely put a foot wrong. We’ve come to expect a new album and a new band every year and here he is again, this time achieving instant synergy with The Cairo Gang (Emmett Kelly and Shahzad Ismaily) with The Wonder Show Of The World.
He’s not with The Cairo Gang just because of their very cool name; their members have played on previous albums, but here their backing vocals and versatile guitar proves integral to a new melodic sound that wears its 60s country rock influences on its sleeve. From the jangling guitar intro on the first track, ‘Troublesome Houses’, highly reminiscent of Harvest-era Neil Young, the mood is wistful but optimistic. This track sets high expectations, as a deceptively casual ambience turns into something very special with a glorious shift from acoustic to electric guitar precisely two and a half minutes in. And, like Neil Young at his best, it uses irresistible music to tell unpalatable stories, in this case how an addiction to prostitutes has destroyed his relationship.
And it’s not the only contender for best song. ‘Merciless and Great’ is a true Bonnie Prince classic, a fragile web of sound woven around a delicate country tune that summons up the clarity and simplicity of ‘Lay Lady Lay’. The interdependence of love and death, two sides of one coin, are captured to perfection and the final line, “Hold me as the fire that brought us chars and takes us home”, is the kind of writing you don’t forget in a hurry.
Oldham is taking a risk by departing from the bleak territory where he is undisputed ruler to embrace what can only be described as uplifting music. It’s a measure of his confidence as songwriter that, almost every time, he takes us with him. The album’s upbeat side really kicks in with ‘Go Folks, Go Forth’. For the dark interpreter of our fears to write a campfire song is quite a surprise. It’s not exactly mainstream, but the exhortation to “Go folks, go forth, trust your brain, trust your body” is a little too close to a self-improvement seminar for comfort.
Elsewhere, any sentimentality evaporates on closer inspection. A tendency towards country corn of ‘Teach Me to Bear You’ is undermined by its troubling title and, when Oldham sings “Someone with magic, someone with bronze, someone with blue eyes to gaze upon” there’s more than a hint that this love is spiked with strange ritual. But there’s no denying the beauty of the yearning guitar solo over the bridge.
By the time we get to ‘The Sounds are Always Begging’, suspicions are confirmed when we hear that “My wife went crazy one day, started chopping up the bed.” There’s definitely something nasty in the woodshed, and it seems to be the music itself. Trapped in the wood that made the guitar, and it wants out. The sounds plead to be heard, begging to escape and return to the forest.
Kelly and Oldham entwine their voices in Fleet Foxes-style harmony on the wintery, gorgeous ‘Someone Coming Through’. There’s nothing here except a squeaking acoustic guitar repeating a simple figure, and two voices singing mysterious lyrics about a Christ-like prophet, arriving in anger and sorrow. It’s a quiet, subtle song about the Second Coming, much too good for Jesus Camp.
It’s easy to take Will Oldham’s decade-long burst of sustained creativity for granted, but perhaps only PJ Harvey is on a musical journey that stands up to comparison. The Wonder Show Of The World makes song-writing seem like a breeze, a fresh, inspiring record that gives us the music we need in uncertain times.