Bonnie “Prince” Billy

Will Oldham has been wandering the reaches of his own imagination since the early ’90s, creating a splendidly idiosyncratic oeuvre that seemingly answers to no man while pleasing many. That desolate Appalachian vibe inherent in his Palace Brothers projects gave the performer some artistic breathing room from many of his equally downbeat contemporaries, whose mythic allusiveness only extended as far as their college lit classes and their suburban anomie.

More recently, as Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Oldham has proven that not only can he cook up multiple personae with the crafty aplomb of a Kool Keith or an ODB, he’s also one of the most consistently strong songwriters we’ve got (take that, Sufjan Stevens!). And if you don’t agree, dig out that Ouija board from the attic and ask Johnny Cash—who covered the title track of 1999’s I See a Darkness to suitably gothic effect. Or check out the 2004 collection Sings Greatest Palace Music, which recasts signal material (“You Will Miss Me When I Burn”) with a band of Nashville session aces, including Hargus “Pig” Robbins. Turns out the singer’s stark minimalism left lots of room for his songs to bloom.

Oldham’s tour coincides with a veritable boomlet in a career kept studiously sotto voce. He shares half of the screen in the new independent film Old Joy, which has won rave reviews. And the recent release of The Letting Go (Drag City) aspires to a kind of lushness. The album was recorded in Iceland with a local string quartet and various sidekicks (Jim White of the Dirty Three, Dawn McCarthy of Faun Fables). Oldham’s voice is miked with a bedroom intimacy that makes his music—so often consciously threadbare—feel like a nice warm blanket.—Steve Dollar