Bonnie "Prince" Billy
Summer In The Southeast

LA RECENSIONE

There are moments when a man reveals himself in his miserable nakedness, at the mercy of his fears, his ghosts, that inner void that devastates and sucks you in, imploding within you like an atomic bomb. It's called depression, but it could also be called hatred, boredom, disgust, nausea, inebriation. And it's difficult to stay afloat in the everyday sea when you're like this, you must cling forcefully to something, to a Medusa's raft that may lead you adrift but certainly won't let you drown amidst everyone's indifference. It could be friends, this raft, or perhaps a love, or simply some medication, some pill of happiness. Or maybe just a record. Which sometimes is really enough to save you. With its harsh sounds, its out-of-tune songs, with its atmosphere drowned by the fumes of alcohol and sadness. As happens in this latest, highly anticipated release by Will Oldham and his preferred moniker, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy.

"Summer in the southeast" is the first live album by the Louisville songwriter. A take on much of "Prince" Billy's previous production, a sort of live "Best Of." Nothing more. A reprise of the Palace, of "I See A Darkness," and even a quote from the very recent "Superwolf." But what is the point of this new reinterpretation, just months after the recent release of "Greatest Palace Music"? It makes sense, and quite a lot. Because this album is different. It's the opposite of the self-indulgent and sharply ironic country of "Greatest." On the contrary, this "Summer In The Southeast" is all the poetry of Oldham's lyrics in its cruel nakedness. Sublime, winking, and vulgar like a high-class whore. It's Will's continuous vocal imperfections that make each track a suffocating and cachectic ghost compared to the studio originals. It's the harsh and rough reinterpretations of "Master And Everyone" or the howls at the moon of "Wolf Among Wolves" that struggle like poorly oiled gears, scratching maliciously at the heart like a gear that won't shift. It's the rowdy and rocking duet of "May It Always Be" with the vulgarly folk voice of Pink Nasty. Or the powerful riffs of Matt Sweeney that make a "Madeleine Mary" that started calmly in almost blues territories distressing and steep. Or even the skeletal and "terminal" reinterpretation of "I See A Darkness," where there's not a single note, not one, that is correctly pitched. A version that conveys and instills a sense of anguish and deep black despair, with a disillusionment and bitterness that stuns in the delirium of a cosmic-sized nothingness.

Rare are the lights of hope that filter through like beams of light, with their message of love, among the inner clouds of the bard from Kentucky. As in "Blokbuster," in its trembling chorus "I was waiting to know, I was waiting to see, I was waiting to go, I was waiting for thee." Because "hell is other people," as Sartre said. But others can also be paradise, and salvation when we overcome our inner fears. And we finally become ourselves again.