Vocalist/songwriter Will Oldham (aka Bonnie "Prince" Billy) and guitarist Matt Sweeney's 2005 collaboration Superwolf was a subtle and haunting affair, with Sweeney's masterful guitar work and understated backing vocals adding counterpoint to some of Oldham's most gently sinister songwriting. Though the duo collaborated before and since the release of Superwolf, they rekindle the spare, pristine atmosphere of the album on Superwolves, a sequel that arrives 16 years after its predecessor. Oldham's albums always temper ...
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Vocalist/songwriter Will Oldham (aka Bonnie "Prince" Billy) and guitarist Matt Sweeney's 2005 collaboration Superwolf was a subtle and haunting affair, with Sweeney's masterful guitar work and understated backing vocals adding counterpoint to some of Oldham's most gently sinister songwriting. Though the duo collaborated before and since the release of Superwolf, they rekindle the spare, pristine atmosphere of the album on Superwolves, a sequel that arrives 16 years after its predecessor. Oldham's albums always temper organic beauty with elements of depravity and bleak humor, and Sweeney's gifts for arranging his variety of excellent guitar tones and performances bring the sublime and sacred side of Oldham's songwriting to the forefront. After the especially menacing album opener "Make Worry for Me," Superwolves switches into a lower gear for the devotional folk of "Good to My Girls" and "God Is Waiting." The spacious "I Am a Youth Inclined to Ramble" recalls British folk while Oldham delivers a quakingly passionate vocal performance aided only by occasional harmonies and Sweeney's perfectly mixed barrage of layered acoustic and overdriven guitars. The jazz-tinged Americana of "My Body Is My Own" is among the more immediately vulnerable songs in Oldham's sprawling catalog, pairing delicate, reverb-glazed guitar voicings with plainspoken lyrics of autonomy and reincarnation. The few songs where Oldham and Sweeney strike up the band -- guest shredding and revved-up rhythms by Tuareg guitarist Mdou Moctar and his band on "Hall of Death" or the tense brooding of album closer "Not Fooling" -- are lively fun, but much like Superwolf many years before it, Superwolves is at its most powerful in its calmest, most clearly articulated moments. ~ Fred Thomas, Rovi
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Add this copy of Superwolves to cart. $38.25, new condition, Sold by Entertainment by Post - UK rated 2.0 out of 5 stars, ships from BRISTOL, SOUTH GLOS, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2021 by Domino.
