Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy “Beware” Review

Growing up in Southeast Texas in the 1980s, I developed a rather distinct impression of what country music was supposed to be. Instead of blaring the classic rock, outlaw country, and pop records that I later discovered they owned, my parents decided to subject my brothers and me to the sounds of Lee Greenwood, Juice Newton, the Judds, and George Strait. All apologies to Strait, and his deserved place in the country music canon, but I still have trouble disassociating his Texas twang from the faux country schlock that unfortunately set the stage for the image-conscious pop-country of Shania Twain and Faith Hill that ultimately followed.

However, while sifting through my parents’ LPs one afternoon, I came across a record entitled Red Headed Stranger by a gentleman named Willie Nelson. Don’t get me wrong, I was aware of Nelson, but, thanks to my upbringing I had unfortunately lumped him and folks like Johnny Cash under the heading of “All Country Music Sucks.” But that record changed everything for me—the haunting sounds, the mysteriously lovelorn lyrics, and the quiet Texas Hill Country atmosphere struck a deep chord in my soul. It was nothing like anything I’d ever heard, but I knew instantly that this was true country music.

I had that same sense of sharp recognition flow through my ears and roll over my soul upon experiencing Beware, the new record from Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. Yes, the indie rock world has come to expect a familiar level of majesty from the pen and lips of Will Oldham, but this project might serve to be his magnum opus. This is at once a gorgeous, tuneful record with achingly beautiful lyrics of romance and longing, while possessing a depth and maturity that call to mind both immediate heart pangs and fond recollections of times long past.

Sure, it’s rather hip these days to dig on folk and country music—Harry Smith’s American Folkways is dogma in some circles—but Beware has no desire to be anything approaching a “hip” record. The 13 songs here are measured and purposeful, crafted by a collection of amazingly intuitive musicians, hand-picked by Oldham himself for their ability to both improvise and follow the leader’s direction. If I didn’t already love “real” country music, this record would surely convert me.

(Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy by Pieter Morlion via flickr per Creative Commons)

My favorite lines on this album bespeak a profound (though often quite unfulfilled and unrequited) love, something that is missing in an indie rock world that prefers a bizarre amalgam of cynicism, whimsy, and irony. On “Heart’s Arms,” Oldham asks his recently departed lover, “Why don’t you write me anymore? Have you found something as good just next door? Why don’t you write me anymore? What did you bind my heart’s arms for?” Oldham displays his heart firmly on his sleeve with “You Don’t Love Me” when he sings, “I wanted to grow old with one who knows me inside out and likes to shout things I’m about,” except that the object of his current affection doesn’t seem to care about him—”but you just turn your head when I get rowdy like a child and you don’t even crack a smile.” Near the end of the record, on “There Is Something I Have To Say,” we find our troubadour seeking some sort of soul-searing catharsis when he plaintively queries “Can we find communion again in the bedroom or just as friends? Is there difference between in lives like ours?”

From beginning to end the songs groan and creak with a tumult of emotion that threatens to break the singer, but Beware never quite overwhelms. This approach works on the whole as there is nothing too jaunty or too melancholy, the upbeat sections never approach hoedown tempos, while the slower material never creeps into Cash-style dirges. A wide variety of folk and country instrumentation abounds—from banjos, mandolins, and pedal steel to violin, accordion, and organ—but the voice and acoustic guitar of Oldham still resonates above it all.

Overall, the listener is presented with a mellow, yet thematically dense post-outlaw-country record, complete with a heavy dose of Appalachian elements. We have heard these tones and sounds before (both on vintage albums and contemporary copycats), but Beware succeeds because Oldham has managed to interpret them with a fresh vitality and claim them for this generation as never before.

[Review by guest contributor Adam P. Newton.]

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Also: Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy @ the Walker’s McGuire Theater