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Bonnie Prince Billy: Is It The Sea?

23rd October 2008 | by David Morris

Just over halfway through this live album, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, and associates Harem Scarem and Alex Neilson play the traditional murder ballad "Molly Bawn". Oldham (Bonnie 'Prince' Billy is his current performing name) knew the ballad at least as far back as his production work on Alasdair Roberts' excellent 2005 album "No Earthly Man".

His take on the tale of mistaken aim and consequence is sung with characterful abandon and raw emotion. Almost as if his lust for the story's existence and its lamentable twists and turns has overwhelmed the customary approach as the solemn teller of a cautionary tale.

The set was recorded in the spring of 2006 in Edinburgh during a short tour of Scotland, for which Will Oldham specifically assembled a group of Scottish musicians. The entire album is characterized by these players and their love for the traditional music of the land they inhabit, though they are forward looking in their approach. The instruments are primarily acoustic: flute, fiddles, banjo, accordion, melodica, drums and guitar.

Alex Neilson is highly regarded for his fierce and unique drumming in free/jazz/noise groups, notably Directing Hand, Tight Meat and Motor Ghost, but is also in high demand as a percussionist with a wide range and a deft feel for augmenting the work of contemporary songwriters (Baby Dee, Josephine Foster, Hush Arbors). He starts the rendition of 'Molly Bawn' with a peel of distant tom drums and is soon joined by soft strumming, clear banjo picking and the cooing sigh of Harem Scarem's close harmonies. From the outset the instruments and atmospheres are captured expertly by Tim Matthew, it is one of the records greatest strengths and he deserves credit. Where "Summer in the Southeast" (a Bonnie live album consisting of cuts from various shows in the S.E states of the US) simmered with amp buzz, crowd chatter and sweaty electric humidity, "Is It the Sea?" is clear, acoustic and luminous. For a comparison listen to 'Wolf among Wolves' which appears on both; they are almost identical in pace, rendition and emotion, but still 2,000 miles apart in terms of ambience.

Bonnie and crew manage to cohesively re-work the songs without sounding like they are trying to outrun or outdo the album versions. 'Cursed Sleep' and 'Love Comes To Me' are the only two songs to appear from the at-the-time forthcoming album "The Letting Go" ("Cursed Sleep" being one of this albums highlights, though not far from the album cut in performance) and only two songs dating before the year 2000 appear, 'Minor Place' and 'New Partner'. The rest are culled, almost equally, from "Superwolf" and "Master and Everyone". For anyone who hasn't heard the outstanding and delicate 'Birch Ballad' (a Superwolf sessions tune first released on the "I Gave You E.P") it appears here full and fine, augmented like the rest of the set by excellent fiddle and accordion playing.

On a few occasions (see 'Bed Is for Sleeping', 'Molly Bawn' and 'My Home Is the Sea') the vocal harmonies of Harem Scarem take on a fairytale-siren quality that radically mutates Oldham's earthy mysticism. It seems that he often chooses striking vocalists to accompany him. When we first encountered Dawn McCarthy's prominent vocals on The Letting Go we found them off-putting and unwelcome, until a live performance in the winter of early 2007 when opinions did an about-turn. The folk theatrics of Harem Scarem's coos and sighs render certain songs a little caricatured. "I am under your spell" they chant repeatedly on 'My Home is the Sea'. But it is an engaging caricature nonetheless. It certainly helps inject something alive and mysterious into a traditional style that can often become the victim of its own stiff sincerity, where even the bawdy is treated with religious or intellectual reverence.

The obscurity of some of Bonnie's lyrics becomes particularly pronounced whilst they bob atop this alternately epic and intimate brood of folk. It is a style commonly associated with a narrative approach that is plain spoken; albeit often in strong dialect. Here meaning and moral are a far more convoluted affair; his words are more akin to the driftwood of the wrecked ship that carried the drowned lover than they are to the traditional lament of the widowed. Paradoxically however, it also bears out how much of Oldham's imagery is reminiscent of traditional lyricism, traversing from the third person to the first, "I undressed and stood there, in the cold and falling snow", could easily have been an 17th century 'she'. "My eyes are for seeing, the wind is for blowing, and you see, love, I am yours for the knowing" could have been the refrain from an ancient lovers ballad. Perhaps in more ways than one, it is.

Due to the style of this album, and the "a BBC recording" tag, it will surely find Oldham some new listeners in the trad-folk pockets but they might find some of his themes and vocabulary as impenetrable as a Highland dialect. For those familiar with Bonnie 'Prince' Billy albums it should be a refreshing document of well known songs. It is not nearly as divisive as the Nashville styling of his 2004 record 'Sings Greatest Palace Music'. Those who have not enjoyed Oldham's releases thus far are unlikely to consider this a turning point.

There is of course the one cover, title track 'Is it the Sea?'. Written by Inge Thomson, the song asks solemn questions from the standpoint of a voyage of pain and continuing experience over a deep and swelling drone:

"So fifteen years roll by, I'm still aboard. I crave the chaos of my family. All I think of is a world ashore... is it life I abhor, is it the sea?"

This is a route of which Bonnie 'Prince' Billy is certainly a fellow mapmaker. It's no wonder the record takes its name from the song, within another's words Will Oldham sounds most at ease. Perhaps glad to find another's footprints on the path which a younger man might wish to have to himself.

Rating:  8 / 10

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