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descended into attempts at false completion: “This is
what makes a thing last / Want to make what didn’t
happen go…” (‘The Brute Choir’)
The music itself is difficult to describe. I don’t know
much about these things, and I could fall back on
phrases others have used – “post-country blues” and
“melancountry” being two of the best. But none of them
work really. As for the lyrics, many reviewers, tied by
word limits, sum it up as “Americana mixed with Old
Testament language”. Again, this seems accurate, but
why would this mixture appeal to a Eurocentric Englishman
who says that to believe in nothing is already
to believe in too much? Me, for instance.
I think it’s not the allusive quality of the language
that’s important but the way it fails. For example,
when Nick Cave “hails the Pentecostal morn”, it alludes
to the given depth and weight of the Western
tradition, which is incidentally why his Goth fans are
so unwittingly conservative. Cave’s elegantly crafted
songs cling to the horror of God’s tragic justice,
clothed in cosy Victorian melodrama. Goths like to
think it’s deeply cultured, and in assuming so appear
like Boyzone fans pointing to the violins playing in
the background on Top Of The Pops saying “Look
Mum, it’s classical music!” We all know it’s only a
distraction not an engagement; only a weekend relief
from good jobs and babies dressed in black.
However, when Oldham sings songs like ‘Arise,
BUY Will Oldham music online from and
Therefore’ from the LP of the same name, the gloriously
clunky Maya Tone drum-machine infects it with
anachronism. Consumers previously happy to enjoy
the wittily named sub-genre “melancountry” saw
this as ‘deconstructing’ the tradition. Even Oldham’s
Sunday Times admirer called this breath-taking LP a
woeful mistake. Clearly, they didn’t like his wrenching
of the form. Instead, this actually makes Arise,
Therefore Oldham’s landmark achievement. Within
it, the cosmic is infected with the mundane, and vice
versa. Or something like that. Perhaps it creates a
genre all its own: Blucolic?
One must hesitate to analyse the lyrics, for the moment
the sheet is read, the grammatical nonsenses
and apparent meaninglessness confound the listening
experience. Despite this, I still want to. The opening
track ‘Stablemate’, which was also the opening song of
his set on the recent European tour, is a scene-setting
distillation of dustbowl starkness:
how could one ever think anything’s
permanent
how can you sleep when I’m going away
I haven’t a reason left in my head
to not go away
A heavy bass underscores the brooding quality of the
song, and it’s no coincidence that the LP was produced
384
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