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Spike | 15 YEARS OF BOOKS, MUSIC, ART, IDEAS | www.spikemagazine.com Feature [published March 1999] Will Oldham: Songs Of The Human Animal Stephen Mitchelmore Who is Will Oldham? Well, maybe he’d like to know first of all. As if in search of the proper one, he’s released LPs under several different names. Made famous by the Palace name (Palace Brothers, Palace Songs, Palace Music), he then reverted to plain Will Oldham for one record, and now he’s Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. He dismisses any deep meaning behind this fluidity of brand name, but such unwillingness to explain is a symptom of the same thing. It’s an unwillingness to secure a ground and remain. Even so, we can be secure in saying he is without doubt the best writer in music today. Not only a remarkable songwriter – The Sunday Times says “Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen already suffer by comparison” – but also a remarkable writer full stop. He’s 29, from Louisville, Kentucky, and his latest LP is called I See A Darkness. Seeing a darkness? Seeing needs light, so there’s something odd about the title. On the surface it appeals to Goth self-dramatising; one can imagine Nick Cave giving a record that title. Yet the implications of this inherent contradiction seep in. Listening increases uncertainty. There’s the song ‘Death To Everyone’ that’s either uplifting or upsetting. I can’t decide. every terrible thing is a relief even months on end buried in grief are easy light times which have to end with the coming of your death friend. (chorus) death to everyone is gonna come and it make hosing much more fun la la la la la la BUY Will Oldham music online from and It’s both. The pained irony in the drawled chorus is absent in the verse. I first heard Will Oldham on the BBC’s John Peel show singing the equally ambiguous refrain: “When you have no-one, no-one can hurt you”, from ‘Days In The Wake’ (1994). At first I heard it as a self-pitying lament for a lost love – which is pleasantly 382 More Spike email RSS Facebook Twitter A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
Spike | 15 YEARS OF BOOKS, MUSIC, ART, IDEAS | www.spikemagazine.com indulgent, but no more than that. Then I heard it as an implicit condemnation of someone protecting a solitude so pain can’t get in. And finally I heard it as someone completely alone who is hurt by the very fact of “noone”. Songwriting, in my experience, is rarely this disconcerting. And it’s not a one-off. The next song on the LP has the repetition, building to a minor crescendo: “God is the answer … God is the answer … God is the answer!” All of which projects outward: there’s the answer, out there, look, follow me. But is soon followed by the softly sung line “God lies within”. Not, as one might expect, the assertion of faith or the bathos of condescension, but the deepening of the question. Where within? Usually in popular music such ambiguity is an issue only until it can be set aside. (Perhaps music is ambiguity set aside). George Steiner claims that music actually defines us as human. He expresses wonder at the profound reverie even the most banal of tunes can set in motion. We “pass beyond ourselves” he says, and we become aware of “unfathomable depths”. This seems familiar enough, and intellectual resistance would certainly prevent this. Music demands an extra degree of trust to let go and be open to the sounds. Yet I would say our resistance to music is just as important and cannot be dispensed with. It too defines us as human. Criticism, let us say reflection, is as inevitable as breathing. Actually, Steiner says as much; music also “takes us home in an unexplained déjà vu”. I would explain all this by saying BUY Will Oldham music online from and the experience of reverie is really its imminence making itself felt, rather than actually occurring. In effect, we are experiencing the nostalgia for an impossible experience. Our continued desire for music is a result of unrequitable hope. Our humanity rests in acknowledging this. Go on, work that one out. Steiner also says that a world without music would be “fundamentally non-human”, which makes one wonder about the humanity of the deaf. For the living, however, silence and what comes with it is inseparable from the experience of music. This tends to move against the will. The part of us that wants music would rather disappear into the ecstatic oblivion of another life, palpable in the musical experience; I know my part does. Indeed, music tends to be judged according to depth of oblivion it reaches – on the dancefloor, in the car, the bedsit, the head. So when the song hinders this disappearance, we resist and say we ‘don’t like’ the music. Nowadays, we are encouraged to condemn the artist for being cerebral, solipsistic and indulgent if oblivion isn’t forthcoming. The irony, of course, is that our resistance is a result of our unique freedom: our individuality. By celebrating this ignorance popular culture is a moronic inferno of denial and aggression – nothing to do with democracy or empowerment. The unique thing about Will Oldham’s songs is that they emerge from this very paradox. Remaining inside it explains why his work has got better rather than 383 More Spike email RSS Facebook Twitter A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
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