Prince of Sighs

Will Oldham is at it again. Another nom de plume, another genre-defying album of timeless, elemental songs. This time the name's Billy, Bonnie Prince Billy, and his new record is the awesome I See A Darkness.

As the man behind all things Palatial (Palace Brothers, Palace Songs, Palace Music, plain old Palace), Oldham has been hailed as the laureate of the American folk/rock underground—Björk is reputed to be a big fan—writing songs that veer from the sacred to the profane, from the unashamedly sexual to the scarily pathological; songs that are both uplifting and as down-and-dirty as they come. Musically there are strands of folk, country, blues and gospel in evidence: Oldham seems as much in debt to Edwin Hawkins as Hank Williams. He also confesses to being a Thin Lizzy fan and has gone on record as saying that one of his biggest influences is Bugs Bunny ("because he doesn't always win", he tells me). Truly, the blue-blooded Kentuckian is one of a kind.

To judge from the song titles on the new album ("Another Day Full Of Dread", "Death To Everyone", "Today I Was An Evil One") one might think that Oldham is skirting dangerously close to self-parody, but actually the tone of I See A Darkness is generally more optimistic and hopeful than previous works which carried the Palace imprimatur. These are less damnation than redemption songs, where love is not just a lie made to make us blue.

The musicians also add a deftness of touch, with simple, breezy melodies complementing what is surely Oldham's most assured vocal performance yet. So what triggered this upturn in the Bonnie Prince's spirits?

"Probably a few things," he answers, down a phone line from New York City. "This was a time for turnaround, from concern for the future to disregard for, or maybe cooperation with, the future."

There's less of a sense of dread?

"It's more enjoying the dread, probably."

You've always been preoccupied with the "big questions": love, sex, death. Especially death . . .

"I think not having a regular paycheck or health plan or mailing address makes a lot of things questionable. Those are pretty easy things to grab onto."

Do you feel that this unsettled, rootless existence shapes the music you make?

"I don't feel I have a choice in the matter," he says. "Nobody's offering me any jobs and I don't think I could hold down a job."

Looking back on the Palace project, is there any particular favourite which you consider to be right on the money?

"All the Palace records have become incorporated into myself," states Oldham, "so I don't feel I have perspective on them. To me they are facts. There's nothing to be objective about anymore. But right now, I feel very strong about Arise, Therefore and especially Joya; about the way those songs were written."

How were they different from the songs on the other records?

"They were different because the songs were very laboured over, just worked over and worked over, both lyrically and musically, whereas with most of the Palace music there was a certain percentage that was left to chance—the lyrics were all there and the chords were all there, but I knew that the song wouldn't have a life until the record button was pressed."

Inscrutable, taciturn, enigmatic. It's hard to disagree with those who would apply such adjectives to Oldham. He is unswervingly polite but extremely guarded, choosing his words with great care. All things considered, one feels that he would rather spend a day at the dentist's than submit to the interview process. And yet it turns out Oldham has dabbled in journalism himself, having recently interviewed cult chanteuse Diamanda Galás for a magazine in America, though that too wasn't quite as smooth as he would have wished.

"I had some arguments with the editors over the content," he explains. "There were certain things she had said that I wanted in there. She was saying how she'd like to throw acid over the faces of guys who walk down the street in New York City rapping violent, misogynist raps to themselves about how 'they're going to fuck that bitch up', you know, and she used a lot of expletives. I called her publicists to see if she was happy with it and apparently Martin Scorsese had just rang up and invited her out to lunch."

For Oldham this was quite a coincidence as he had just visited the set of Scorsese's new movie, Bringing Out the Dead. In his previous life as an actor, Oldham had worked with the likes of John Sayles, but he gave it up, he says, because he didn't like speaking other people's words and because of the scarcity of well-written scripts. Yet he refused to rule out the possibility that he might one day rejoin the thespian race.

For now, however, he is getting deeper into the business side of the record industry. He is releasing I See A Darkness in the US on his own label, Palace Records. I asked him how it had been received by the critics over there. His answer was ominously brief.

"I didn't send any copies to any writers."

I See A Darkness is out now on Domino Records.