The Palace Brothers are like nothing you will hear this side of Kentucky. I’ve been trying to figure out just how much I like them, just how highly I regard them. I’ve been playing their debut album, There Is No One What Will Take Care Of You again and again and again. Ah bollocks, I’ll throw caution to the wind and say that hearing them for the first time was like hearing Bob Dylan or Lou Reed or Robert Johnson or Neil Young, for the first time.
Their songs have that stamp. You know when you hear great songs and once you’ve heard them it’s hard to imagine that there was a time when those songs weren’t around? The Palace Brothers have such songs. Theirs are melodies of soft, shifting beauty. Theirs are lyrics of intriguing complexity. They tell stories of the fragile nature of life and relationships, of how knowing what is the right thing to do is never quite enough.
Will Oldham says very little about what inspires him to compose such deep and intoxicating songs. It’s not that he wants to be awkward or unhelpful, more that he has put such tremendous energy and thought into his music, that there are no other explanations, other than those to be found in the songs themselves.
The one time he did open up a bit was when I asked whether their music’s roots orientation had anything to do with a feeling that the American Dream was slipping away from the grip of many Americans.
“It could be a response to that. I guess it could have something to do with some sort of unwillingness to accept the common American citizen. Right now it seems as if it’s recognised that the ‘slacker’ person is a stereotype of a lot of America right now. That’s not even saying that you lie and cheat and steal. It’s just saying that you don’t do much of anything. America was something that was on the move since its birth, and isn’t as on the move now. There’s a settledness that may exist in an older country that people feel more comfortable with their roles in a settled society. You know, I don’t think there’s as much unsureness in an older country, except for countries that go through huge changes, as there is for people in America now.
“We were in a growing country for such a long while and now we’re in a country that’s not growing in that way anymore. So their job as a citizen is not to become part of the growth of America but rather to find out how they can exist separate from the identity of the state of America. To exist just as citizens instead. No, not as citizens, just as people who have their own families and things and who are unable to connect to something that isn’t moving that way.”
Really, what Will Oldham says or doesn’t say in an interview, matters not a damn. Because Will and the rest of The Palace Brothers don’t give two shits about interviews or posing or anything like that. It’s their music they care about, and the care shows, oh how it shows. It’s in the songs where his words ring out, alright, with a voice of coarse beauty and a mind of diamond sharpness. Like on ‘(I Was Drunk At The) Pulpit’, a song which begins in the church and then losing interest in the hope religion offers, moves to the pub. There he sits with his companions and observes: “There were arms linked in sympathy, gilded the glaring/Of these bloated companions who hid ‘neath their swearing/Some need for another kin to brother lust/Which coarse words and music was faith and was trust/Yes I saw independence and inherent weakness/Within walls which hid sunlight and hindered all frankness/That floor there supported what souls couldn’t stand/On their own in their own eyes to hint they are men/Who are slaves to their vision but to that alone/Yes each of them cloistered, fear of being alone/Wherever folks gather to imply a rule/They are each one a sinner, each one a fool/For if I drink my whiskey and if I sing a song/I have no breast companion for trailing along/To imagine a sharing of burdens I earned/To steal from the embers I strove so to burn.”
Will Oldham has a ‘hand-crafted’ voice, if you know what I mean. Its rootsy feel has echoes of bluegrass, hillbilly, country and blues. It is raw and honest and when it reaches for some notes it has a pleasant uncertainty about it. As a person Will is decent and friendly but finds it difficult — and perhaps unnecessary — to explain in conversation what The Palace Brothers are about.
At one point I asked him how he would respond if he met someone in a pub and they found out he was in a band and then asked him what sort of music he played. He shrugged and gave a bit of a bemused laugh. Finally, he replied: “I never know what to say when people ask that.” There you go.
The Palace Brothers are a loose sort of affair, with about a dozen musicians being involved at one time or another. On their just finished tour of Ireland Will was the only member present who was also part of the recording of that quite extraordinary debut album. The album sleeve itself does not name musicians. Instead there is an “impossible without” heading, and underneath a list of some thirty people. This list contains band members, family, friends and one Steve Albini.
If Beanz Meanz Heinz then Albini Means Production. In the alternative world his hand has touched everything from Nirvana to PJ Harvey to a group called Slint. Albini described Slint’s second album, Spiderland (Touch & Go) as, “one of only three great records released in the past decade (1980s).” Some say Slint died and became The Palace Brothers. (Three of the original Slint line-up appear under the “impossible without” credits. Only one of them, David Pajo, came on the Irish tour.) But really the connection is immaterial because the two groups are so entirely different as to make comparisons misleading.
Slint were an interesting, alternative type of group, whose music went through constant shifts and time changes, and whose lyrics were usually spoken in a flat monotone voice. I appreciated their debut — Tweez (Touch & Go) — to a degree but they didn’t touch me. (I’ve just bought Spiderland (Touch & Go), which on first couple of listens does sound impressive.)
The Palace Brothers, on the other hand, I’ve immediately fallen in love with. At the Baggot Inn, they took me in from those first glorious notes of ‘Ohio River Boat Song’. It was like wow! is this as good as I think it is? Or am I dreaming or what? They played a blinder. And it was more of a blinder because volume had nothing to do with it.
Here was a group that got up on stage and let the songs do the business, who were performing before a totally new audience yet had the courage to play only what was needed and to allow the melodies and lyrics to seep through the spaces provided. The fiddle added its beautiful touches (it’s a banjo on the album), the bass and drums were there to support, while the two guitars picked and strummed with a sparse, beautiful simplicity.
Aside from the glorious music what im-pressed me was the band’s total lack of pretence. There was no rush to the dressing room after the gig. Instead they hung around, smiling, shaking hands, talking and laughing with everybody and anybody. Which would give a lie to what Will said about the songs and the songsmiths.
“I guess we have our own lives outside of the songs and that onstage it’s time for the songs to be doing what they do. And it’s good to keep the two things really separate. You know, the songs are for people to enjoy, whereas we as individuals aren’t.” He laughed. He was only joking, you know.
That’s the thing about The Palace Brothers. They’re up there for the music. They love their craft. And they want others to love it too. When I talked to Will about how his songs were rooted in stories of a local community, he agreed. But he added that there was a globalness to it too, that it dealt with emotions of spiritual and emotional loss and longing and searching, that such needs were shared by everybody.
Will Oldham was hungry for experience. When we were talking about roots and indigenous communities, I mentioned the Travelling community and how a number of them sometimes drank in Mulligans of Hill Street. He was eager for me to explain more about them. As I did his eyes began to light up. He simply had to go there, and he made me draw a map. Hold on, this was no American touristy thing. This was like offering roots fodder to a roots maker. This excited him in the same way Claddagh Records excited him. He was delighted to find such a wide selection of stuff and was keen to hear more Irish traditional music. He had heard about Christy Moore and wanted me to explain his appeal. He talked excitedly about hearing ‘The Lakes Of Pontchartrain’ and being blown away by it. When I said that I’d do him a compilation with it and other such songs, he replied that that was the best thing I could possibly do for him.
Categorisation and “best since” and all that is a load of crap. Good music warms the heart, thrills the spirit and makes the foot tap and the hips sway. Good music is what The Palace Brothers make. If you buy There Is No One What Will Take Care Of You, I don’t think you’ll regret it.