Bonnie 'Prince' Billy
The Purple Bird

It's a novelty!

It's a novelty that I find myself writing about an album that I just bought, and it's a novelty that I bought it after just one listen.

A novelty, yes, but not a surprise.

Everyone knew I would end up getting it: me, already in mid-January, when I saw the Buscadero cover announcing it; Mario, the record store owner, who informed me of its arrival the Saturday before the release; even Will Oldham himself, while recording it at the Cowboy Arms Hotel and Recording Spa in Nashville (that is, he would have, if he knew who I am).

The Purple Bird, the new work of Bonnie "Prince" Billy (the latest stage name of that Will Oldham who, inexplicably, is unaware of my existence), was released last Friday; the next day it was already at my house.

Why? Because I love this man, of course, but also because, already from that first listen, and in subsequent ones, this album has comforted, moved, amused, and above all reassured me: benzodiazepines at 33 rpm. Or almost.

Do you remember I See a Darkness? Well, it has nothing to do with it!

Somehow, though, the story of this album begins there. At the center of the project is a friend: producer David "Ferg" Ferguson. The two met when Will went to watch Johnny Cash record the cover of I See a Darkness for American III: Solitary Man, with Ferguson serving as sound engineer.

A country producer, then, for an album recorded in Nashville with the participation of numerous musicians and songwriters from the local scene, who collaborated on the writing of seven out of twelve tracks.

Neither country music nor collaborations, in reality, are unusual in Oldham's discography, but there's more here. It's as if Will wanted to "live" the place and the creative process of that tradition which he has internalized but is not part of. A matter of method rather than result: making his own music, but making it as it's done in Nashville.

And to lead him "to the heart of the mystery of all those country records I've devoured over the years" (cit.) is Ferg, his Virgil - or Beatrice, depending on how much you like country. He accompanies him to the artists, with him the co-writing sessions of the songs come to life (David Ferguson appears, in fact, not only as a producer but also as a co-author of all seven collaborative tracks), he introduces him to the musicians. Often, it's at his home that songs are born, a familiar place where, hanging on a wall, there's a drawing David did in second grade that will inspire the album cover and title.

The method of co-composing adopted in this work is new for Will and has the genuine and concrete flavor of Tennessee. Some chat around a table, the guitars, an idea, then you start working, a couple of hours and there it is: the song is there.

I like to imagine these meetings, I'm fascinated by the collaborative dimension, people of different ages, experiences, ideas, political beliefs, coming together and creating something, overcoming individualities and differences, reaching, in music, a synthesis.

Will stated in an interview that composing and singing with a country veteran like John Anderson was something akin to a prize for him, one of the greatest satisfactions an independent artist like him could aspire to. And even if the two don't seem to have much in common, the two tracks they co-authored (The Water’s Fine and Downstream) work wonderfully. But this album is full of songs that can capture you: London May; Boise, Idaho; Sometimes It’s Hard to Breathe, just to name a few.

Novelty, I said, but certainly not innovation.

Here lies all the country tradition and probably this is also what makes it so comforting for me.

However, maybe there's some small flaw in my reasoning. For example, Guns Are For Cowards, a denunciatory waltz (!?) against the spread of weapons, despite the country fair music, has nothing reassuring ("If you could do it with no one saying you'd committed a crime/Make a list of people you could destroy forever/Who would you shoot in the face? Who would you shoot in the head?"), except, from my personal point of view, the fact of not being American. Or it's not clear why a Neapolitan like me should find comfort in a tradition as distant from her as country...Could it be the mandolins?

Contradictions aside, I believe that what shapes my perception of this work significantly is the finale (after all, the taste that remains in your mouth after dinner is always that of the dessert), consisting of a splendid cover of Is My Living in Vain? by Elbernita "Twinkie" Clark and Our Home written and played with mandolinist Tim O'Brien (see, it all comes back?!)

In the penultimate track, when asked if everything is meaningless, the answer is "It's not all in vain /'Cause up the road is eternal gain", which could be translated as "Not everything is in vain/Because further up the road there's eternal gain". Being a gospel song, the verse probably alludes to the Afterlife, but here, followed by the choral Our Home, with those verses of comforting sense of "homemade" life ("Look into the eyes of the people you meet/[..]/When hard times come to put you down/ You’re as strong as the people you know"), it seems to me it can be interpreted, by slightly forcing the translation, in a different way: that the ultimate meaning, the reason it’s not all in vain, is precisely the journey and the people you travel it with.

I admit it, with the speakers off, I might cynically smile at such a simplistically optimistic vision, but the magic is all here: while the music plays, I end up truly believing it. And it matters little if the illusion lasts only 43 minutes and 35 seconds, as I can play it again and again and again.

Here I am trapped in an obsessive listening.

And no, this is not a novelty!