Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 25/09/06
Label: Domino

In the period since his last solo album, 2003's "Master & Everyone", Bonnie Prince Billy (aka Will Oldham) appears to have settled into something resembling domestic bliss. On that bleak masterpiece, the Prince famously portrayed himself as a "Wolf Among Wolves", unable to commit to his lover and just as willing to cuckold someone else's. Compare this with the beautiful opening track here, "Love Comes To Me", and his transformation into a "hard-hearted honey-pot hungry shepherd". Oldham's voice, once cracked and thin, is rounded, soulful and almost - almost - user-friendly. On paper it might not sound much, but "The Letting Go" should be taken quite literally: the Bonnie Prince has undergone a Damascene conversion of the heart.

Recorded entirely in Reykjavik, the process of decamping to Iceland has, perversely, resulted in a peculiarly English take on folk music. Rather than arrive with a batch of fully formed material, Oldham's modus operandi appears to have been based around spontaneity - with plucked guitars and idle keyboard meanderings only revealing themselves after a few minutes or repeated listening. The arrangements, based around a small string section and the "Wicker Man" wail of fellow vocalist Dawn McCarthy, embellish and lift even the most ordinary songs toward the light. The overall effect is as ghostly as a candle in a lighthouse window. With Oldham whispering deep into his microphone, the listener is drawn in and silenced. The sound is closer than an impending storm.

Mostly though, "The Letting Go" is an album of moments. Oldham describing "the softest lips ever, 25 years waiting to kiss them," on "Strange Form Of Life"; the mute horns on "I Called You Back"; and the conclusion to "No Bad News", where Oldham breaks from the verse and starts ad-libbing "hey little bird", only for McCarthy to start mimicking him. The shift from dark cloud to clear skies sees the whole song depart into a bright halo of sunshine

But above all, this album reaches essential status, thanks to two pieces of extraordinary songwriting: "Cursed Love" and "Then The Letting Go". The former, a minor key blues that rides melancholy violins and cello, recalls both Nick Drake and John Martyn and reveals itself as an epic and never-ending sonnet of love ("I am loving, always holding, while she sleeps, her song enfolding"). The latter is a sprawling duet where Oldham and McCarthy's words are split into separate and intertwining parts. The effect of two vocalists singing different songs within the same song is hallucinatory and hugely affecting.

Arguably up there with his greatest achievements to date, "The Letting Go" is business as usual for Oldham, but also a brand new start.

    by Adam Webb