Reviews Search

WILL OLDHAM, "GUARAPERO - LOST BLUES 2"

This collection of Oldhamtunes pulls a ton of stuff (16 tracks to be exact) from four trackdemos, home recordings, live stuff, peel sessions and other bits andpieces hanging around from the last seven years.
Perhaps twangycrooning Kentucky-based country type blues isn't the typical style hereon brainwashed, but Oldham's got a strong connection to M and a fewother post-rockin type personna. Guests include Steve Albini, DavidGrubbs, David Pajo and Mick Turner among many others. Throughout thecourse of 65 minutes, the recordings get progressively more polished,starting off with some really scratchy tape recordings and ending up ona more professional note. Oldham's got a great sense of humor andoriginality with lovable singalongs like "Big Balls" or "The Spider'sDude is Often There" where he claims that Heaven's tits are teasinghim. His lyrics can be simple and hillbilly sounding but almost alwaysquite clever. Out of nowhere on this disc is an MC 900FT Jesussample-of-a-sample coupled with the Twin Peaks theme running backwards.I can't say I'm familiar enough with Oldham and all his projects(anything with Palace in the name pretty much) to know if the out oftune clumsy sound in songs like "Every Mother's Son" and "No MoreRides" is 100% intentional or not. I must admit that I can't evenfigure out the point of reviewing this CD since if you're a fanalready, you'd buy this to compliment your collection - and if you'renot (but are interested nonetheless), then it's not the mostrecommendable place to start. A good collection however and I find itprovides for some good dinner cooking music.

samples: