Now with The Cairo Gang on full-billing, this record often feels like a proper collaboration, with Emmet Kelly’s folksy, melody-tracking, guitar-picking (alternating between acoustic and electric) very much to the fore, an old-fashioned, un-aggressive running-bass to the aft, and Will Oldham’s plaintiff tenor accompanied at regular intervals by lovely, tight, high harmonies.
Sometimes the new record recalls pastoral greats like Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor and Neil Young, but generally it sounds like nothing other than an ageless new Will Oldham record. There’s an effortless ease to the songs that eschew the usual singer-songwriter clichés about “craft”. Each once manages to seem like a conversational accident that emerged from a song-writing savant fully formed. In reality, these beautiful songs are meticulously pieced together, and I’m guessing Oldham, like the swot who pretends he’s done no study, probably works his arse off. It’s just that when the word “craft” springs to mind on listening to a song, it really means that the song sounds like work. And Will Oldham’s music never sounds like work. He makes it all seem like the natural and automatic response to domestic strife and existential angst, and this makes this record, like much of Oldham’s work, a calming balm for times of strife.
Oldham has already, by dint of his previous achievements, ascended to the pantheon of America’s great songwriters. In many ways his work is done. He doesn’t really need to keep doing this, but I’m very glad he does.