Bonnie Prince Billy - Master And Everyone (CD 2003)

Writing in his Bonnie Prince Billy guise, Will Oldham’s ‘Master and Everyone’ is an album of 10 songs, just over 34 minutes long, but is an object lesson in how less is more.

The songs feature minimal accompaniment to Oldham’s own voice and acoustic guitar in the shape of occasional female backing vocals and mellow guitars and strings. All that there really is to concentrate on is the quality of the writing, but what high quality it is.

There are no bad tracks here: each song shines with lyrical maturity and melodic beauty far beyond most of Oldham’s peers. It is hard to pick out highlights, but the first five and the final track are truly outstanding. ‘Master and Everyone’ seems so simple; Oldham makes it look so easy which is always the sign of talent at work.

The music here is so mellow, melodic and soothing it is like balm to the ears but there is depth and emotional resonance to the lyrics. To pigeonhole it as alt.country is a shame because such labeling might deny the work a wider audience. To sum up, this is one of the best singer-songwriter albums I have ever heard and is highly recommended.