CD Odyssey Disc 927: Bonnie Prince Billy

I was back to work today after a week jam-packed with social engagements. I had a great time at all of them but tonight I’m looking forward to hunkering down with my wife and cat and watching the second half of the football game.

Disc 927 is….Ease Down the Road

Artist: Bonnie Prince Billy

Year of Release: 2001

What’s up with the Cover? A quaint seaside road invites you to ease down it. Just know when to hit the brakes or your car is going to spill into the drink.

How I Came To Know It: After my friend Josh put me on to Bonnie Prince Billy a few years back I went on a mission to listen to all of his albums. “Ease Down the Road” was one of several that appealed enough for me to buy it.

How It Stacks Up:  I have four studio albums by Bonnie Prince Billy. Of the four, “Ease Down the Road” is easily the best.

Ratings: 4 stars but almost 5

“Ease Down the Road” is Bonnie Prince Billy (aka Will Oldham) at his confessional best. This record is filled with a quiet grace that steals into the cracks in your soul, getting down into those places where you keep your darkness. Then Oldham makes that darkness beautiful.

The album is well suited to its name, with melodies that are light and easy. Oldham’s high and airy vocals always feel like they are expressing some deeper truth that the rest of us fail to grasp. They are loaded with emotion and well suited to the stark and straightforward lyrics that fill the songs on the record.

The opening track, “May It Always Be,” is a gorgeous love song from a man who is fully comfortable with his own failings, to the point that he turns them into virtue:

“If you love me, and I’m weak

Then weaker you love me more

To re-enforce what’s also strong

And all the love we have in store.”

“In the morning we’ll wrestle

And ruin our stomachs with coffee

Won’t we be won’t we be won’t we be happy

And we will rise in anger love and ardor

Shining shining sparkling shining

Shimmering in love’s armour.”

The album is filled with explorations of love, and more than a little sex as well. Oldham sings freely about oral sex, bodily fluids and even more specific carnal acts I think it best you discover on your own. He does all of it in a way that is so natural and beautiful that you feel a little bad that you ever thought such things were dirty. He’s not a handsome man, but he is a sexy one, and he’s not afraid to talk about it.

Even the title track, which features marital infidelity in the front seat of a car, somehow gets lifted above the sordid nature of its subject. Oldham seems unconcerned with the moral complexity of it all, closing the song with:

“Eleanor was thrashing

I stopped the car we got a beer

And then eased down the road

A little guilt, and some guilt spilt

And added to our load.”

The production on the album is subtle and understated but perfect throughout. Guitar, banjo and piano all blend in wherever they’re needed, bowing out when they aren’t. Harmonies from the backup singers give some songs a hymn-like quality, with Oldham preaching the gospel of humanity, in all its frailty, uncertainty and subtle strength.

The music is a match for the great lyrics. Even songs that aren’t my favourites like “The Lion Lair” have progressions that round on themselves lazily, never resolving when you think they will. Instead they leave you in suspension as they circle for an extra bar or two before landing effortlessly, just where they need to be.

My favourite track is “A King At Night.” Oldham completely loses himself in the character of someone thoroughly entitled, but completely at ease with themselves. The song’s melody dances with itself even as the character – who is more than slightly insane – revels in the troubled kingdom of his own mind.

“Ease Down the Road” is one of those albums that reveals a little more of itself every time I listen to it. In a few years it will probably grow to become a five star album as I dig deeper into its mysteries.

Best tracks: May It Always Be, Careless Love, A King at Night, At Break of Day, Ease Down the Road, Grand Dark Feeling of Emptiness, Rich Wife Full of Happiness