A short album about love

[SORRY! If you're reading this after 5pm on Weds 19 Feb, you've missed the chance to enter this fab competition. But you can still watch our video interview and acoustic exclusive. That should keep you happy until next time... the hotpress.com desk]

Will Oldham albums arrive without much noise or fanfare. Not because they're anything less than dearly anticipated - but because there's none of this "Can he top the last one? Is it any good?" business. We just know it's going to be great.

And so, exactly, is Master And Everyone. It's less backwoods-hermit - more human-sized and gentle - than usual, on first listen, built as it is around hearth-warm folk-style acoustics, female voice, and his own dark-brown whisper; but these seemingly simple songs about love are just as perilous, blackly funny and lonesome as any of the old stuff about having a sister for a paramour. Even in the tenderest moments, danger, human frailty, desolation and the avenging aggrieved spouse's knife are all just out of view. "I loved to look at you from the side at night/ With music playing..." he confides in 'Even If Love'. "And love will protect you/ To the edge of the wood/ And a monster will get you/ and love does no good."

So, on the occasion of its release, we bring you the chance to win one of three copies of Master And Everyone. Just answer this question, and mail us at [email protected]:

Which of the following is not a Will Oldham pseudonym (past or present)?
a. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy
b. Palace Brothers
c. Palace Music
d. LaRhonda 'Boom Boom' Jackson

And while you're at it, watch a video interview filmed the last time he visited Dublin, touring previous album Ease Down The Road (also splendid):

1. "I want the records to have their own separate existences": Will on his actor's past and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy/Palace-based alter egos regular quality high quality

2. "It was fantastic to be in a situation where you're speaking and communicating with someone else - who is 143 steps beyond where i was, in terms of thinking about music - and feeling like you could say things that you couldn't say to anyone else, and be understood": Will on singing with Johnny Cash on 'I See A Darkness' regular quality high quality

Lastly, be sure not to miss his acoustic performance of '64' (from his 2000 Get On Jolly EP), played in Whelans after a soundcheck, especially for you. regular quality high quality

Enjoy and good luck!