Here's a pretty good piece on Will Oldham (aka Palace, aka Palace Songs, etc., aka Bonnie Prince Billy):
Oldham has been releasing records for fifteen years, though almost never under his own name. His first recordings were credited to Palace Brothers, a name inspired by John Steinbeck's "Cannery Row"—in which the characters' makeshift home is known as the Palace Flophouse—and by close-harmony duos such as the Louvin Brothers, who helped expand the scope of early country music, and the Everly Brothers, whose hits from half a century ago underscored the link between country music and early rock and roll. Oldham was a student of music history, clearly, but he never sounded studious. He had an eerie, strangulated voice, half wild and half broken. And he sang vivid and peculiar songs, which sometimes sounded like old standards rewritten as fever dreams or, occasionally, as inscrutable dirty jokes.
These days, he calls himself Bonnie "Prince" Billy, and his music is a little bit easier to love and a lot harder to dismiss. He has settled into character as an uncanny troubadour, singing a sort of transfigured country music, and he has become, in his own subterranean way, a canonical figure.
One of YPTR's favorites, as it happens. Pretty much everything comes recommended, but I particularly like Viva Last Blues, I See a Darkness, and Master and Everyone.
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