#Bonnie Prince Billy
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Jonathan Shaw's Year in Review: Another year of pissed-off music (and some that’s somehow not so pissed), for the freaks, and the lovers, and the ghosts
2023 threatened for some months to be a marginally less awful mess than the several years before it, but then came autumn, and the Cop28 Conference turned into a massive lobbying event for the fossil fuels industry; and Geert Wilders pulled off his dismaying political success in the Netherlands; and the paranoid style in American politics was further entrenched (witness MTG’s juice as a figure of national political import and Mike Johnson holding the House gavel); and Gaza was reduced to blood-soaked rubble; and there is the ever-increasing, mind-flaying certainty that yes, 2024 will be dominated in the States by a presidential race between two completely unacceptable choices: a frail Boomer largely coasting on the fact that he is not his principal rival for the office, and that principal rival, whose absurdity increases in direct proportion to the hazard of his petulant, narcissistic rage.
No wonder much of the music on this list is so steeped in fury, contempt and sorrow for the continuing idiocy and grinding horror of the human condition. Some of that music is memorably grim, or ferocious, or both. See the records below by Gravesend, Lucifixion and Spirit Possession, all of which cut viscerally violent paths through your senses. Eardrums are subjected to scorched-earth treatment. I dig it.
But those aren’t the only feeling tones available on records I listened to a lot this year (still the dominant metric for how records get on this list: How often did I play them?). On “Bananas,” a great song from Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You, Will Oldham’s gentle strumming and the song’s duet of hushed vocals dramatize lovemaking, to achingly gorgeous effect. On “Quiet World,” the best track on Home Front’s excellent Games of Power, the band commits to the sad-boy, New Romantic postpunk that some of their other songs flirt with a good deal less certainly. And while no one would ever wish to accuse the Sleaford Mods of anything other than sardonic smarts, “The Rhythms of Class” may be as close to pop music as the band has ever gotten, and it’s a terrific tune.
So maybe that’s why Gel’s Only Constant got so much play in my world this year: it’s “hardcore for fucking freaks,” as the band likes to insist, and it rips. But that’s not its only tone. The songs are also affirming, like the hand on your back at the edge of the pit that doesn’t shove but seeks to steady you on your pins. You can hear plenty of anger in the songs, but it’s not the sort that sends you out to score coke or oxy (more likely it'll mostly be fentanyl—careful out there, kids) or prompts you to set fire to random objects in the public square. It’s music to dance to, along with the other freaks, and to gather and sing in support of something you believe in. And thank goodness there is still great punk rock that wants us to feel that.
So Only Constant is presented below, first, as the album I am most grateful for this year, and all the other records are alphabetical by artist.
Gel—Only Constant (Convulse Records)
What’s better than those first 50 seconds of “Honed Blade”? To my ears, this year, nothing.
BIG|BRAVE—nature morte (Thrill Jockey)
Noisy, beautiful and idiosyncratic songs of love, desperation and death. The band finds new ways to create shapes with sound, and tunes out of those shapes.
Bonnie “Prince” Billy—Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You (Drag City)
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Simultaneously spare and lush, poetical and direct, wooden and fleshed. It’s the best record he’s made in some years.
Gravesend—Gowanus Death Stomp (20 Buck Spin)
Like a dip in the Gowanus Canal, this record is cold, corrosive and really, really bad for you. Not all of Brooklyn is for hipsters.
Home Front—Games of Power (La Vida Es un Mus)
Synth-rich postpunk meets the macho multi-voiced choruses of Oi! and the unthinkable happens: the songs are really, really good.
Lucifixion—Trisect Joys of Pierced Hearts (Sentient Ruin Laboratories)
Icy, satanic black metal that’ll strip you down to the bones, and it’ll grin while doing so. Weirdly, you may grin, too.
Retirement—Buyer’s Remorse (Iron Lung Records)
Overly adventurous consumers might have some buyer’s remorse if this record slips impulsively into their carts on a Bandcamp Friday, but smart punks sure won’t. Fast, nasty, hammering, anti-capitalist hardcore.
Sleaford Mods—UK Grim (Rough Trade)
More songs slagging Idles, Brexit, Tories and Labour, but as ever, the Mods make it all sound fresh. Angry, exhausted and jaded, but still fresh. Neat trick. Good record.
Spectral Lore—11 Days (I, Voidhanger)
Originally released as a straight-to-digital charity fundraiser, 11 Days has been packaged as a CD by I, Voidhanger and put back into circulation. Unusually political for Spectral Lore, the record sonically represents the journey thousands of migrants have taken across the Mediterranean, only to face the current racism and ethno-nationalisms proliferating through Europe. It’s harrowing stuff.
Spirit Possession—…Of the Sign (Profound Lore)
Utterly nutty, memorably antic, acid-drenched black metal. Like a bad trip, but you’ll be sort of disappointed when it ends.
Special shout-out to Mitski for “My Love Mine All Mine,” a great song that is, as a friend pointed out to me, both pop and the real thing—in spite of which the broader culture has embraced it. And also this:
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They’re both gone now, but we still have their songs, and memories of them like this one. O’Connor’s weird, inbent charisma is hugely effective here, and she is so, so lovely. But it’s MacGowan’s song, and while he wrote it a bit earlier (when he and Cait O’Riordan were both still in the Pogues; she sings on the excellent version of the tune that made it onto Sid and Nancy’s soundtrack), it’s bittersweet that the last great song he ever recorded and released was a love song. A song in which the power of love is registered by the extent to which one is “haunted” by its “ghost,” and hence also by its death—that’s MacGowan to the core, and we’ll never get another songwriter like him.
Down with fascism, smash all nationalisms, turn the music up.
Jonathan Shaw
#dusted magazine#yearend 2023#jonathan shaw#gel#big brave#bonnie prince billy#gravesend#home front#luxifixion#retirement#sleaford mods#spectral lore#spirit possession#shane macgowan#sinead o'connor#mitski
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...Bonnie "Prince" Billy...
(Will Oldham)
"Strange Form Of Life"
2006.
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"Strange Form of Life"
A strange form of life kicking through windows, rolling on yards
Heading in loved ones, triggering odds
A strange one
And a hard way to come into a cabin, into the weather
Into a path walking together
A hard one
And the softest lips ever, twenty-five years of waiting to kiss them
Smiling and waiting to bend down and kiss twice
The softest lips
And a dark little room across the nation, you found myself racing
Forgetting the strange and the hard and the soft kiss
In the dark room
And a strange form of life kicking through windows, rolling on yards
Heading in loved ones, triggering odds
A strange one
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Like so many robins
Like so many doves
Like so many lovebirds
With so many loves
Like the songs of the bobwhite
Without any words
When we are inhuman
We're one with the birds
So sing with me
And widely spread
Your olive wings
Embrace my head
Fly with me
Until we are dead
And one with the birds
Well a swallow will tell you
Without using misleading, heartrending words
When we are inhuman
We're one with the birds
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Bon Soir 🆕️ 💙🍌🫂
Bonnie Prince Billy 🎶 Bananas
(Keeping Secrets Will Destoy You)
#new music#bonnie prince billy#music video#bananas#clip video#keeping secrets will destoy you#clipanim#youtube#clip music anim#bon soir#fidjie fidjie
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03.23.24 Bonnie Prince Billy and friends at the Big Ears Festival
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Bill Callahan & Bonnie Prince Billy "The Night of Santiago (feat. David Grubbs) (Lyrics Video)
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Bonnie 'Prince' Billy — Master
And Everyone. 2003 : Domino.
! listen @ Bandcamp ★ buy me a coffee !
#rock music#folk rock#acoustic music#bonnie prince billy#2003#domino records#singer songwriter#2000s#2000s rock
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I'm gonna shine out in the wild kindness
And hold the world to its word
#breviário de sons#bill callahan#bonnie prince billy#cassie berman#the wild kindness#blind date party#silver jews#david berman
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Songs of 2023
Here we are, a bit late, not quite as late as last year. 2023 was a busy year but somehow an uncomplex one for me—there’ve been worse years, there’ve been better. If the songs spoke to the times, they did so in obscure ways. Nonetheless: 50 favourite songs, 50 fuzzy thoughts, I hope you like them too.
1. Fenne Lily, “Lights Light Up”
Just the right amount of confidence and the right amount of caveats; just the right amount of magic and the right amount of realism.
2. Boygenius, “True Blue”
I love the matter-of-factness of Lucy Dacus’ diction here, putting friendship to words like it’s the most obvious thing in the world: “I can’t hide from you like I hide from myself, duh.”
3. ANOHNI, “Sliver of Ice”
Somehow, amidst the wreckage, it’s the elegance of ANOHNI’s rhymes that get me: view/blue, tonight/light, more/before; if only death was so simple.
4. Caroline Polachek, “Billions”
All I can say here, and it’ll sound silly, is that what’s happening in this song is an attempt to block off the curve from hedonism to cynicism.
5. Ratboys, “Black Earth, WI”
How is it that, with the mushroom cloud above and the ground opening up before them, Ratboys seem to have all the time in the world?
6. Julie Byrne, “Portrait of a Clear Day”
There’s a particular vocal style, smooth and blue like a lake surface, that you find in some English folk music, and in 2023 Julie Byrne was its sharpest, wisest practitioner.
7. Feist, “Hiding Out in the Open”
Homespun, delicate; thrillingly, almost uncomfortably intimate.
8. Slaughter Beach, Dog, “Strange Weather”
One for cataloguing, inventorying, totting up, working out where you stand.
9. Yo La Tengo, “Aselestine”
“Aselestine”’s two songs: the instrumentals so serenely flowing, circling, generative; Georgia Hubley’s vocals so clipped, terse, holding back.
10. Billy Woods & Kenny Segal ft. Samuel T. Herring, “FaceTime”
Could Billy Woods be our foremost imagist? “In a Station of the Metro” but the train’s derailed, bones snapped, screaming kids, twisted metal? I’ve already said too much.
11. Doja Cat, “Agora Hills”
The year’s best pop song, a delicate dedication from (is it fair to say?) unexpected quarters, smut and bravado doing the bare minimum to conceal its softness.
12. Mitski, “Bug Like an Angel”
This song doesn’t have a chorus in the sense of a refrain but has a chorus in the Ancient Greek sense, a set of voices that interrupt in unison, sometimes using dramatic irony.
13. Big Thief, “Born for Loving You”
Sometimes we speak out of the sides of our mouths and sometimes we dissemble; Big Thief could never.
14. The Antlers, “I Was Not There”
The word sweep is a good one for songs by the Antlers: conveying breadth and inexorability, it’s cosy and domestic too; to sweep like they do is to upturn, to wreck, but to renovate, to welcome.
15. Lana Del Rey, “The Grants”
Philip Larkin said poetry was a matter of experiencing a vision then “attempt[ing] to express the whole of which the vision is a part.” For Lana there’s no whole or part, just vision.
16. The Pines of Rome, “I Am a Road”
Gnomic, wry, lamenting, ground-down but still kicking, a bit ornery but if you sit down at its feet you’ll learn something.
17. Bonnie “Prince” Billy, “Willow, Pine and Oak”
Stolid and unsappy, this tripartite scheme isn’t quite right, but it certainly is one way of looking at the world.
18. Lande Hekt, “Pottery Class”
This song says it’s about missing someone, but all those sighs, all those “again”s, all those “buts” make you wonder.
19. James Yorkston, Nina Persson and the Second Hand Orchestra, “A Forestful of Rogues”
“If I say so myself, and I damn well do”—when you start a line like that you can follow it up with almost anything.
20. M83, “Amnesia”
Big as stars and glistening like them; who, in 2023, does it better?
21. CMAT, “Vincent Kompany”
CMAT sometimes seems to want to be “relatable” but then snaps out of it and takes joy in being idiosyncratic, or a bit off, or, basically, really fucking odd.
22. Mannequin Pussy, “I Got Heaven”
Let it be known that in 2023 we snarled sometimes.
23. Shit Present, “More to Lose”
Shit Present, in the best of traditions, use monotone as a weapon: here Iona Cairns drags down what could be a soaring chorus in the most politically astute of ways.
24. Fever Ray, “Kandy”
The word could be skeletal: minimal, of course, but also spooky, schlocky, body-horror, prone to decomposition.
25. Girl Ray, “Hold Tight”
“Hold Tight” says it wants simple sedentary situations, “talking shit on the grass,” “get a Coke and sit on the wall,” all while it bounces and hops non-stop.
26. Charlotte Cornfield, “You and Me”
I’ll admit to preferring the more pensive Charlotte Cornfield, but no one’s surprised she can do affirmative too.
27. Shannon Lay, “From the Morning”
I love Shannon Lay’s confidence: there’s something ever-so-slightly irreverent in this Nick Drake cover, just the slightest smirk.
28. Jeff Rosenstock, “HEALMODE”
The sort of song you find under rotting wooden pallets in derelict parts of the city.
29. The Mountain Goats, “Fresh Tattoo”
The Mountain Goats grow old no worse for wear: still telling meandering parables, still making us feel right at home.
30. Samia, “Charm You”
“As You Are,” Samia’s paean to unconditional familial love, was my favourite song of 2021. “Charm You” works up the same giddiness about a new relationship but introduces a smidge of reticence.
31. Alex Lahey, “The Answer Is Always Yes”
A big year for affirmations in pop (see#4, #26, #46), but (1) this one’s so intricate too, and (2) this one knows what it’s up against too.
32. The Hold Steady, “Grand Junction”
Metronomic, “Grand Junction” declines to shift its swing, which is no problem as it keeps on hitting.
33. Arlo Parks, “Dog Rose”
Arlo Parks writes pop songs with an undercurrent, love songs that threaten to get a bit weird.
34. Holly Humberstone and MUNA, “Into Your Room”
A late entrant: one that toys with overstatement, knows it sounds a bit overblown, but wants to say what it has to say anyway and see how it goes.
35. Young Fathers, “Holy Moly”
This sounds like 2006 to me, a sticky floor and cigarette smoke.
36. Heather Woods Broderick, “Seemed a River”
This song’s weirdly verbose, maybe it’s indecisive? Maybe it’s keeping secrets?
37. Pearla, “Flicker”
Circularity like the seasons, like the sunrise-sunset, like fresh starts, like the worms.
38. Sparklehorse, “The Scull of Lucia”
A grandiose sort of lullaby, making short work of squally seas.
39. Joy Oladokun, “Changes”
I go back and forth on this one: it feels tailored for the Obama playlist, but it still charms me; sometimes it seems too smooth for the ugly world it describes, but there are more egregious sins.
40. Quinnie, “Security Question”
A missed connection that spirals from a whim into a crisis: the entire problem of other minds “at some party I wandered to.”
41. Black Country, New Road, “Laughing Song (Live at Bush Hall)”
On Live at Bush Hall BC,NR continued to be our best worriers, biters of nails, pickers of scabs.
42. Blink-182, “More Than You Know”
If there’s nostalgia here, and there may be, it’s for “Easy Target” or “Stockholm Syndrome,” the careful use of melancholy, the harmonies, Travis Barker drumming like a submachine gun.
43. Vagabon, “Lexicon”
Vagabon’s a rare songwriter who’ll admit to speechlessness, dumbstruckness, stagefright. But some things are unsayable, some thoughts do need to be expressed in deeds.
44. Subsonic Eye, “Machine”
Go on then, make it seem effortless!
45. The Milk Carton Kids, “Star Shine”
I suspect this one’s too hard on itself—there are big lies and little lies, gentle ones and harsh ones, after all.
46. Sufjan Stevens, “Shit Talk”
Somewhere in the ’10s Sufjan became a permanent presence: a waystation, a landmark, a totem, and on Javelin you feel he cautiously started embracing that.
47. Indigo De Souza, “Losing”
It’s one thing to say “less is more”, it’s another to model brevity like this, to just fill two minutes and nineteen seconds with five- or six-word lines that describe all the details of one thought.
48. Fred Again.., “Winnie (Rosslyn Crescent)”
I’m still captivated by Fred Again..’s soundscapes, his windows into London kitchen-sink scenes, and how much he leaves unsaid.
49. Sofia Kourtesis, “Moving Houses”
Fractured images, shards of life, but Sofia Kourtesis seems confident things can be put back together.
50. Oneohtrix Point Never, “Nightmare Paint”
Not an album where you can pick out one song, of course, but if I had to it’d be this pew-pew space opera, brightly lit and smoothly running, letting the unknown in through the airlock.
#music#2023#fenne lily#boygenius#anohni#caroline polachek#ratboys#julie byrne#feist#slaughter beach dog#yo la tengo#billy woods#kenny segal#doja cat#mitski#big thief#the antlers#lana del rey#the pines of rome#bonnie prince billy#lande hekt#james yorkston#nina persson#m83#cmat#mannequin pussy#shit present#fever ray#girl ray#charlotte cornfield
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bonnie why hast thou forsaken Spotify?
i mean, i know why and wholly agree but still … dude’s absence is mortally felt by all our mixtapes *a great weeping & gnashing of teeth 🦷
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Bonnie “Prince” Billy — Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You (Drag City)
Photo by Urban Wyatt
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Will Oldham’s latest album as Bonnie “Prince” Billy has a deceptive simplicity. It is mostly framed in casual, campfire strumming and homespun stringed accents. Its lyrics scan in a predictable, folk-infused manner, following steady rhythms in waltz-time and four-four; they are delivered with wry, unflappable confidentiality, however surreal or fanciful they turn. Keeping Secrets feels like, itself, a bit of a hidden gem, murmured at you rather than shouted, a quiet one but a grower. You might imagine a family gathering, after dinner, playing for the joy of it, a vibe that Oldham captures in his understated single, “Crazy Blue Bells,” when he croons, “Someday when there’s time to sing, a few of us will gather, and raise a voice to anything because everything matters.”
This is not to say that there is anything austere about Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You. On the contrary, these songs bloom like an old-fashioned garden, outwardly modest but wafting heady perfume and color in your direction. “Bananas” is a gentle knock-out, as it buzzes with glorious, dizzying harmonies (Dane Waters sings back-up) and ends with an operatic high note, hushed but also astonishing. “Blood of the Wine” drapes lush folds of string sound over its minor key jitter, skittering jewel-like mandolin trills over Appalachian lament. Oldham benefits from some real skill in his backing band, which includes Sara Louise Callaway on violin, Kendall Carter on keys, Elisabeth Fuchsia on viola and violin, Dave Howard on mandolin, Drew Miller on saxophone and Dane Waters singing.
Of course, Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s casual music get together is better than yours will ever be, because of who he is, a master of whimsy and existential dread and a consummate constructor of metaphor. That’s on the verbal side; he is also quite good at melody. His songs curve and flower in pleasing ways that are not quite unexpected, but not a cliché either. They sound familiar when you hear them first and burn in slowly over multiple hearings.
On the verbal side, I’d give the nod to “Willow, Pine, and Oak,” a gently coruscating examination of human failure, cast in the form of an extended meditation on trees. Here are willows, sucking up all the water, and pines, showy but prickly and oozing resin, and oaks, the best by far, on the basis of strength and constancy. It’s the sort of extended metaphor that is simultaneously exact about its subject and its larger poetical applications, and instead of quoting the words, I urge you to just listen to it once or twice and here how well it does what it does. The melody of this song is lovely, too, with swooning lashes of string sound and the most subliminal kind of harmonies. It is sort of perfect despite the degree of difficulty. If I were a diving judge I’d give it a 10.
For sheer sonic beauty, however, the prize is harder to award, so let’s split it between haunting “Bananas” and more ebullient “Behold! Beheld!,” both quiet and unassuming but full of grace. It’s a gift to be simple. Keeping Secrets is that sort of present.
Jennifer Kelly
#bonnie prince billy#will oldham#keeping secrets will destroy you#drag city#jennifer kelly#albumreview#dusted magazine#folk#country#Youtube
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"Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You" by Bonnie Prince Billy https://ift.tt/pKEd9Qa
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Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy :: Once Again In The World (Selected Songs, 1998-2020)
Spanning 1998-2020, Once Again In The World is a collection of rare and unreleased tracks from Will Oldham as Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. Released last year, via the Portland, OR based Antiquated Future Records, the set acts as a companion the label’s other Oldham offering, Time From Work To Go (Selected Songs, 1992-1998), gathering fifteen curios from the previous Palace era.
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Bonnie "Prince" Billy
3S Artspace, Portsmouth, NH
2 October 2023
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Song Review: Bonnie “Prince” Billy - “Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You”
When Bonnie “Prince” Billy released Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You earlier this year, there was no song with that name.
Turns out the title track was a non-album single. And it makes sense as “Keeping Secrets,” the song, doesn’t fit thematically or musically with Keeping Secrets, the album.
Where the latter features classical, bluegrass and jazz instruments and ruminates on death, the former employs folk and rock instrumentation and focuses on living.
The song unrolls slowly over five minutes as Billy and background singers repeat the song’s 12 lines with building urgency:
Tell me what’s wrong with me/say it in a clear cold whisper/how can I grow old/if I don’t know/are you afraid to sing it/see, keeping secrets will destroy you, they sing in part.
Billy was wise to leave “Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You” off Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You. He was wiser still to release it as a single.
Grade card: Bonnie “Prince” Billy - “Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You” - A
12/5/23
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