Palace Brothers

PALACE BROTHERS: “Palace Brothers” (Domino)

When I listen to Will Oldham’s music, it’s easy to believe that he grew up around the turn of the century. That he was out wandering beside the Mississippi, with his guitar slung over his shoulder, when Scotty got his parameters wrong and beamed him up into 1994. So here he finds himself, in an age when computers are smart and getting smarter and people are getting dumber. But until the androids come knocking, he’s going to ignore them and sing about horses and dogs.

By modern standards, last year’s majestical There Is No One What Will Take Care Of You was bare. Palace Brothers is twice as bare, mainly acoustic guitar and voice. If it reminds me of anything then it’s a Woody Guthrie or Robert Johnston outpouring, or perhaps Bob Dylan’s debut album.

If you are to listen to this album, without going — just what the fuck!? — then you must transport yourself back to a place where fields were rough and unyielding and where forests surrounded everything. Where roads were made of dirt, and rutted. Where it was sometimes hard to tell the difference between wild and farm animals.

If you’ve got yourself back into that time zone, then imagine Will Oldham perched like some crow on a fence, strumming away on a guitar held together with twine. He’s singing these songs for no one in particular. He’s singing them because they’re there to be sung, because he feels that it’s right to sing them.

What purpose has this music? What relevance has it? What does it say? It says that there was a time… It’s love songs say that no matter when the time was, feelings always remain the same. It is perhaps an act of reaching back to a time when things were steady, when change took generations, and when people knew their customs would be with them until they died. It’s looking for that security.

Will Oldham has an old map, and he is walking its roads, oblivious to the new worlds pressing down on him. Perhaps he is foolish, an escapist. But then, what does it matter? If you turn out the light to this music, if you close your eyes and let his landscapes open up, then you can travel with him for a time. Like this:

“I am no more a work-horse/I am no more a work-horse/I am a racing horse/I am a racing horse/I am your favourite horse/I am your favourite horse.”

• Gerry McGovern