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▀█████▓▌ MTD Proudly Presents ▐▓█████▀
[Info]
Artist : Bonnie "Prince" Billy
Album : Best Troubador
Label : Drag City Records
Genre : Rock
Street Date : 2017-05-05
Quality : 209 kbps / 44.1kHz / Joint Stereo
Encoder : Lame 3.98.4 -V0
Size : 89.25 MB
Time : 56:04 min
Url : http://tinyurl.com/yc9xftzs
[Tracks]
1. The Fugitive 3:31
2. I'm Always On A Mountain When I Fall 2:45
3. The Day The Rains Came 3:12
4. Haggard (Like I've Never Been Before) 3:46
5. I Always Get Lucky With You 3:47
6. Leonard 3:14
7. My Old Pal 3:42
8. Roses In The Winter 3:58
9. Some Of Us Fly 5:05
10. Wouldn't That Be Something 3:27
11. Pray 3:16
12. That's The Way Love Goes 3:04
13. Nobody's Darling 4:05
14. What I Hate (Excerpt) 0:20
15. I Am What I Am 4:16
16. If I Could Only Fly 4:36
[Notes]
Will Oldham is a superior songwriter and vocalist when he wants to be, but
there's just enough of a willful persona to his work as Bonnie "Prince"
Billy and within the Palace rubric that it's hard to tell when he's being
serious and when he's pulling his audience's collective leg, even when his
work is good. One of the things that makes Best Troubador something truly
special is that, more than nearly all of Oldham's work to date, he's playing
straight throughout, and for a good reason. The misspelled but sincere
honorific of the title refers to Merle Haggard; according to the liner
notes, this album was in the works before Hag's death in April 2016, but
when the great man passed, Oldham and his collaborators refashioned it into
a tribute album devoted to songs Haggard wrote or sang. Most of the album
was recorded and mixed live, with flute and sax added to the arrangements
along with the more traditional guitars, fiddles, and banjos, and the
overall effect is certainly idiosyncratic, as one might expect from Oldham;
this sounds like a slightly buzzed guitar pull as often as it sounds like a
fully focused recording session. But if the tone of these performances is
laid-back, they're also sincere and committed, and as a vocalist BPB has
rarely been better. As a songwriter, Oldham clearly appreciates the craft of
Haggard's songwriting, as well as the honest emotional pull of these tunes,
and he sings them with a genuine measure of respect and love. And the grainy
drawl of Oldham's voice was made to order for these stories of the ups and
downs of life and love, and it's all but impossible not to be moved by this
craggy sincerity and the genuine soul of this music. There are more deep
cuts than familiar hits on Best Troubador, but that's another part of what
makes this album so pleasurable; this is a deep dive into Haggard's body of
work as seen through the eyes of Bonnie "Prince" Billy, and Oldham and his
crew deliver plenty of reminders why Hag was one of the greatest songwriters
of his generation. In his liner notes, Oldham writes, "Hag won't make more
music, but the music he made is deep and rich and complex and forever
yielding." Best Troubador does a splendid job of showing how right he is
about Haggard and his songs, and you'd have to go back to 1994's splendid
multi-artist disc Tulare Dust to hear as sincere and affecting a tribute to
this most American of artists.