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Bonnie 'Prince' Billy with Harem Scarem & Alex Neilson, "Is it the Sea?"
This is the third live album from Will Oldham in as many years and out of the three, this one is the best. An excellent recording care of the BBC, Oldham and his backing band for the small tour are on fire. The original radio broadcast made its way to the Internet a while ago but like most downloads on my hard drive it remains unlistened to. I am sorry I did not listen to it as this CD has proven to be astounding in its beauty and perfection.
I saw this line up of the Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy band at a different concert on the same tour and listening back to them now, I still stand by my review of that night that the group’s performance of these songs old and (at the time) new surpassed the performances found on Oldham’s recorded output. Classics like “New Partner” and “Master and Everyone” are given perhaps their best renditions yet. Two less familiar songs, both covers, stand proud amidst Oldham’s originals. “Molly Bawn” is a haunting traditional song about a man mistakenly killing his wife to be and it is one of the finest songs that Oldham has lent his voice to. The other cover is by Harem Scarem themselves; “Is it the Sea?” is an achingly sad song in Oldham’s hands (although the version of it on Oldham’s other live album Wilding in the West does not do the song justice at all). Ruminations of an old fisherman on his life spent on the ocean (“Is it the hell I fear, is it the sea?”) segue into the familiar strains of “My Home is the Sea” which sounds like it was born to be played after “Is it the Sea?”
Some of the songs performed during this performance that would later emerge on The Letting Go are remarkably close to the studio versions despite the completely different line ups and instrumentation. It is likely that the songs were well finished being written by the time Oldham embarked on this tour (and from the timing, I imagine that the bulk of The Letting Go had been recorded in some form or other at this point) but still it is surprising that there is not more variation between the two presentations of these songs. I must admit that “Cursed Sleep” does sound a little empty without Dawn McCarthy’s distinctive vocals intoning the melody but aside from that, I would be hard pushed to choose between these versions or the studio ones as favourites. In any case, the versions here are certainly leagues ahead of the hardcore fan-only demo CD Wai Notes.
A couple of things that are missing from the recordings are the short bit that Oldham performed solo at the start and the encores. It is a pity that the whole thing was not included, although I am guessing this is a direct copy of a BBC broadcast. However, this album is still worth every single penny as it shows one of the greatest songwriters of the last century in top form.
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