Bonnie "Prince" Billy & Amy Farris
Album:
Sings Greatest Palace Music/Anyway
BONNIE “PRINCE” BILLY & AMY FARRISSings Greatest Palace Music/AnywayDrag City & Yep Rocwww.amyfarris.com
There is something deeply conservative in the alternative-country mindset, something that admirably tries to keep country music honest (because of where it comes from, and what it values), yet also carries a whiff of impossible purism (because no yardstick can measure the chimera of authenticity). American music tends not to put out a welcome mat for intricate systems of rules regarding what should or shouldn’t be done.
For at least a decade, Will Oldham – a.k.a. Palace, Palace Songs, Palace Brothers and, currently, Bonnie “Prince” Billy – has regarded the welcome mat with the flinty eye of a curmudgeon: he’ll wipe his feet if he damn well feels like it. Amy Farris, an Austin native with a talent for violin, mandolin and viola, has played with Texans ranging from Alejandro Escovedo to Ray Price. But as a fairly fresh solo artist, she’s more naturally inclined than Oldham to show respect for C&W history.
Nevertheless, both Oldham’s Greatest Palace Music and Farris’s Anyway feel like poignant throwbacks. Both are honest-to-goodness misty reveries of country as it used to be (at least according to sources of widely variant reliability).
Oldham’s look back is particularly strange. Basically, he’s decided to re-record selected items from his back catalog, but with Nashville session musicians – the very enemy by alt-country standards – and a lightly syrupy sound that recalls the string-laden weepers of 1970’s country producer Billy Sherrill. Familiars like Andrew Bird are present, but the day truly belongs to the pros, who spin the dust from “Ohio River Boat Song” and “You Will Miss Me When I Burn” into gold, and treat Oldham as if he’s Willie Nelson’s brash nephew – a younger, angrier man who still wants to be on a honky-tonk jukebox circa 1975.
Farris runs a longer line of history – her voice recalls both Emmylou Harris and Brenda Lee with equal strength. Tracks such as “Pretty Dresses” and “Undecided” might have fit into a pre-Elvis teen flick or might bring a smile to the apple cheeks of the nice folks attending a taping of A Prairie Home Companion. Dave Alvin’s production adds an airplane hangar of reverb, but wisely lays off Farris’s crisp musicianship. His fondness for the plainspoken is clearly evident in the slightly less pre-aged tracks like “Drivin’ All Night Long.”
Both artists show promise – Farris as an intriguing, jazzy talent coming into her own, and Oldham as a veteran restless enough to recast his songs in a variety of new (and quite old) settings. Neither goes too weird for country, and neither stays hidebound enough for alt-country, purist division.
Jon M. Gilbertson is Vital Source's Music Editor. He also freelances for just about every pub in the region that writes about the subject.
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