Bonnie Prince Billy

Perhaps we'll never tire of attending shows like this one. Yes, because there are quality live sets and shows that reek of karaoke, products of an industry that promotes bands and situations solely to sell merchandise and herd together identical crowds. Bonnie "Prince" Billy's performance certainly belongs to the first category: a musician backed by his undeniable talents as a songwriter and a genuinely singular entertainer.

L'Estragon is packed tonight, despite the miserable weather, and the makings of a memorable evening reveal themselves with the true surprise of this set. Taking the stage with her small piano is Susanna Wallumrod, a Norwegian elf with the appearance of a statuesque woman and a voice like velvet. We admit we know very little of her work, but tonight we make up for that gap, watching entranced through a performance of nearly an hour, where her voice, the ensemble discreetly backing her, and the positive aura that fills the room all merge into a whole that nearly floors us.

We struggle to recover from these compositions, so simple and direct, arranged with a taste and restraint that leave us stunned. Worth noting is a spine-tingling version of Thin Lizzy's "Jailbreak", or the duet with mr. Oldham himself on a heart-wrenching "Without You", made famous by Barbra Streisand, or the tribute to Nico in a transfigured "Janitor Of Lunacy", all tracks included on his latest work under his own name, “Flower Of Evil”, released last year on Rune Grammophone. These are interspersed with ballads of her own writing, featured on the album “Sonata Mix Dwarf Cosmos”, among which stand out an ancestral version of "Born In The Desert", like a Bjork less entangled with electronics, a chilling "Stay", and the messianic "Demon Dance", whose melodic circularity even recalls certain psych-leaning moments from Tool — and that's not meant as a provocation at all. As an opener, we can call ourselves thoroughly satisfied; the man from Louisville has accustomed us to surprises of this kind, and it's safe to say he has always surrounded himself with musicians of a certain artistic caliber, and tonight he proved it once again.

After a short pause, the silhouette of Will Oldham appears, decked out in a mad gardener's overalls, and the start is inevitably dedicated to tracks from his latest, umpteenth work, “Beware”, in truth a step back in his discography. We must admit, however, that some of these tracks take on their rightful, beefed-up rock dimension live, one that feels like a heartfelt homage to the atmospheres of masters like Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, or to the altered country of a great forgotten songwriter like Gram Parsons. The real gems, though, are all concentrated in the splendid frescoes found on albums like “Ease Down The Road”, “Master And Everyone” or “The Letting Go”, and it's a shame the dark territories of “I See A Darkness” weren't touched upon: it would have been the perfect show.

Still, when our ears hear, rapt, a "The Seedling" that sounds like an indie-gospel-rock avalanche beyond what even the most fervent devotees of the genre born to sing the Lord's praises could have expected, then things are seriously called into question — as they are too in the mangled, unrecognizable "Ease Down The Road", or in the duet ballad with violinist Cheyenne Mize, "Ain't You Wealthy, Ain't You Wise", truly a masterclass in songwriting, or the tender "Careless Love".

But more than any other, the song that floored us was a slow-building version of "Even If Love", a long and exhausting emotional tug-of-war that finally broke us down completely.

The set has the quality of intelligently balancing intimate moods with whiffs of southern rock, within which peeks through a kind of quest carrying the subtle flavor of a subdued psychedelia, never sterile or self-indulgent, woven into a deliberate desire to revisit the many songs in ever-different versions — revealing a path of exploration not only into the song form tout court, but also into its live delivery. In short, the guy knows what he's doing, and it shows. He has practically reinvented the singer-songwriter tradition within folk (perhaps only a sacred monster like Townes Van Zandt managed to do better), but that's another story. One thing remains beyond dispute: this evening was special. We almost forgot to mention the presence of drummer Jim White of the great Dirty Three, and thanks in part to him, we witnessed one of the finest concerts of the year.

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