Search - Bonnie Prince Billy :: No More Workhorse Blues

Excellent Bonus Tracks

Richard Johnson | Los Angeles, California Republic, USA | 10/26/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The two extra tracks on this single, Ruby and the Kiss, are so beautiful and sublime as to justify, by themselves, the price of this three-track disc, even if you don't particularly care for the title track. "Ruby" is a creepy, minor mode masterpiece that sounds something like Avalon-era Roxy Music interspersed with grunge-metallic crushing guitars and lupine yeowlings. "The Kiss," an achingly sweet song by Judee Sill, is as maudlin and wrenching as anything Bonnie "Prince" Billy has written himself, and shows him to be (signature voice cracks notwithstanding) a world-class performer, a singer so affecting that he seems almost to lift the veil between heaven and earth, when he sings (in a style reminscent of Simon & Garfunkle in their most mystical moments) "and lately sparkling hosts come fill my dreams descending on fiery beams."



(Warning: the disc has a naughty picture on it that really does not do justice to the sweetness of the music; it's almost as if it's been put there to take the edge off of the music, which might otherwise make one cry.)



This disc is quite different from Greatest Palace Music (which, as listeners will discover is among the best, most poetic and most existential, countrypolitan records ever made -- like Witchitaw Lineman on heavy meds, but with much more authentic-sounding instrumental accompaniment by Nashville session cats that even the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band would be pround to work with) and from the other BPB albums, I See A Darkness, Ease Down The Road, Master And Everyone, and Superwolf, each of which is destined to be a classic of American popular music, up there with Stephen Foster's songs and Bob Dylan's good albums.



The title track is also interesting, and not at all typical of the main album from which it is taken. The disc also has a (weird, avant-garde, not particularly exciting) video on it. However, it is tracks 2 and 3 that make this a must-have for Will Oldham fans, music lovers, and human beings in general."