BONNIE "Prince" Billy is weird beard Will Oldham, the definitive alternative-country noir act.
Only now he has gone and re-defined his earlier lo-fi works, revisiting ramshackle songs cherry-picked by fans from his former guises as Palace Brothers, Palace Songs, Palace Music and... Palace.
What's more, he has given his Palace music over to the fiddles and pedal steel of Nashville session musicians, a typically perverse act that might have ended up stuck in treacle but instead points to the potential of these anxious songs to be the the darkest of dark country standards.
Creeping danger still lurks within Riding, West Palm Beach and More Brother Rides, while the likes of the swinging I Am A Cinematographer and I Send My Love To You would not be out of place on a Lyle Lovett record. For the first time, the summer and winter Palace stand side by side.
Updated: 08:39 Thursday, March 25, 2004
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