Bonnie Prince Billy and the Cairo Gang The Wonder Show Of The World (Domino)
4/5
By: Matt Tomiak
The Wonder Show of the World, the latest album from Kentucky ever-productive Kentucky troubadour Will Oldham AKA Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, is his first release with The Cairo Gang, but as ever it’s a thing of simmering beauty.
Opener 'Troublesome Houses' contains some superbly evocative lyrical imagery, describing a love soured by the narrator's pathological penchant for houses of ill-repute: "she could taste trouble on my mouth", Oldham confesses starkly. Tracks like 'Teach Me to Bear You' put me in mind of Bruce Springsteen's 1987 LP Tunnel of Love; at 39, Oldham is just a year older than Springsteen was upon TOL's release, and both albums are concerned primarily with the reconciliations and readjustments that inevitably occur as middle ages approaches.
Elsewhere, The Wonder Show of the World is mostly comparable to Neil Young's post-Harvest Moon twilight renaissance; in particular, the mercurial guitars of 'With Cornstalks or Among Them' match the wandering spontaneity of Young's instrumental soundtrack to the cult 1995 Jim Jarmusch neo-Western Dead Man.
Artists in this article: Bonnie 'Prince' Billy
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