Dublin Opinion

It is typical of most singers or bands that play here that the majority of the set list is going to be songs off their latest album, despite the fact that if they’ve a few under their belt most fans are really there to hear the earlier ‘classics’.

Being aware of this I presumed that I wouldn’t hear many of the Will Oldham, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Palace or Palace Brother songs that I’ve come to know. But I was fairly content with this. I’ve seen Will Oldham under different names many times before, both in Vicar Street, where he and his six piece band played last Sunday night and Whelan’s, the regular hang out for all things alt-country in Dublin.

What I was surprising by was that not knowing the songs didn’t make the slightest difference, because Will and band put in an astonishing performance. And characteristically of late (if my mate Alan who has the Letting Go is correct) none of the songs performed sounded like the ones on the new album anyway.

Coming on stage after two rather lengthy support acts - the second was Baby Dee, who has a thing about albinos and made some jokes about her Japanese harp etc - the band formed a triangle of players which included Aram Stith on double bass, drummer Alex Nielsen, guitarist Emmett Kelly, and a female singer and violinist who’s name escapes me now but who replaced Dawn McCarthy’s vocals for the songs from Letting Go.

The band acted as a good, well practiced ensemble, and although the brilliant lyrics can be a bit sinister and often the tracks recorded on many of Will Oldham’s albums are slow, bare in arrangement and dark of sound, almost all the songs performed on Sunday had a gleeful, giddy-up feel. Indeed, many could be described as ‘rollicking’, but the sparse arrangements have also been replaced with a much fuller sound. Often they positively boomed. This change seems to owe much to the reworking of old standards for the Greatest Palace Music, which Oldham recorded in Nashville, turning songs like the almost maudlin sounding I Am A Cinematographer into fireside sing-alongs, which you imagined should be sung with some a whooping and a hollerin’ going on.

That is not to suggest that they lacked a dark atmosphere when required. The version of The Seedling (vid below) was almost sinister, much more so than the original recording, with the guitar work providing a sense of sustained menace. It was probably the standout song of the night, in an evening full of brilliant music.

Will and crew also provided many of the old standards too. The much requested, as always, Ohio River Boat Song was turned from a song of despair into a chirpy sea shanty. But I See a Darkness, the second song of the encore was brilliant and stark with Oldham singing it alone with only some percussion as accompaniment. Lion’s Lair from Ease on Down the Road was also really good, and another that was rerecorded for the Greatest Palace Music Brute Choir originally from Viva Last Blues has a much larger sound, the booming singing of the group making it sound like a choir.

After that song Oldham said it was inspired by those people who say things like ‘there’s no good music out there at the moment’. People like that must be retarded, he said. There’s so much good music out there that our ears are simply too small to hear it all.