Notes

---

1. Disorder 4:22
(moyra mcbride and maxon blewitt)

2. Riding 3:22
(the strugglers)

3. I Send My Love To You 3:32
(Calexico)

4. Southside Of The World 2:56
(Sodastream)

5. We All, Us Three, Will Ride 3:08
(Iron & Wine)

6. Werner's Last Blues To Blokbuster 4:37
(Saint Aldrijn)

7. Trudy Dies 3:52
(Scout Niblet)

8. A Sucker's Evening 3:10
(Boy Omega)

9. A Minor Place 4:07
(Pinetop Seven)

10. Work Hard Play Hard 2:46
(Pale Horse And Rider)

11. Agnes, Queen Of Sorrow 5:54
(Jeffrey Luck Lucas)

12. Viva Ultra 4:43
(Christian Kiefer)

13. Careless Love 2:07
(Racingpaperairplanes)

14. You Will Miss Me When I Burn 5:03
(Rivulets)

15. All Gone All Gone 3:49
(Sorry About Dresden)

16. May It Always Be 2:54
(Pink Nasty)

17. Black 4:00
(The Channel)

18. Kid Of Harith 6:00
(Hudson Bell)


Total time: 1:10:22


http://www.megaupload.com/?d=ZLOKBTAR

In early 2004, Will Oldham released a tribute album to himself, the sprawling and divisive Bonnie "Prince" Billy Sings Greatest Palace Music. Oldham's history of shape-shifting (his aliases to date include Palace, Palace Music, Palace Songs, Palace Brothers, Will Oldham, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, and the simplified Bonny Billy) has always encouraged a certain amount of stylistic diversity, allowing him the freedom to craft new homes for his thin, defeated yelps and quasi-absurdist prose. Sometimes, his goods are framed in full-band noise (Palace Music's Viva Last Blues); other times, they're spare and minimal (Palace Brothers' spectacular Days in the Wake). Still, Greatest Palace Music saw Oldham's tendency towards reinvention circle in on itself, the ultimate expression of meta-reflection: Oldham performing his older material under the guise of his contemporary alter-ego, with a crowd of Nashville session musicians adding sickly sax solos and slide guitar.

Just months later, Tract Records has released a slightly more conventional tribute record: I Am a Cold Rock. I Am a Dull Grass. features covers of classic Oldham cuts voiced by prominent indie artists (Iron & Wine, Calexico, Pinetop Seven, Sorry About Dresden, Scout Niblett, and Adrian Crowley appear) and a slew of lesser-known Oldham admirers who were hand-picked from the label's open call for submissions. And since most of this two-disc collection's material playfully imitates Oldham's trademark spare-and-acoustic style, it seems likely to introduce fans of the Oldham aesthetic to some impressive new voices, including Jeffrey Luck Lucas and Diana Darby.

Of course, it's the more recognizable names that triumph. Calexico's take on Days in the Wake's "I Send My Love to You" is a stunning reanimation. Its lilting pedal steel, violin, light percussion, and boy/girl harmonies puff up Oldham's vocals-and-guitar lament, adding heft and gently smoothing over all of Oldham's scaly admissions-- a cool hand brushing bits of hair from a sticky brow. Fundamentally, Calexico's approach is not really so different from what Oldham himself attempted on Greatest Palace Music: harsh, abrasive intensity traded for a soft, layered beauty. Iron & Wine's cover of "We All, Us Three, Will Ride" builds on the Viva Last Blues cut with gently shaken handheld percussion, and Sam Beam's hushed, melodic vocals smoothing out Oldham's Appalachian crackle.

In true Oldham spirit, however, the safest contributions to I Am a Cold Rock are also the greatest missteps-- Pale Horse and Rider's studied "Work Hard/Play Hard" follows the Palace version too closely, ultimately missing the dirt-road recklessness that made the original so jarring and addictive. Likewise, Rivulets' melancholy strumming gives "You Will Miss Me When I Burn" a markedly suburban feel, with vocalist Nathan Amundson's plaintive perfect pitch evoking none of the stewing emotion of the Days in the Wake original.

The unexpected cohesiveness of I Am a Cold Rock-- which, however inadvertently, strips away all accoutrements, lineup changes, and other superficial fixes-- reveals Oldham as a surprisingly consistent songwriter, despite all his coy tricks and outfit-changes. In the past, Oldham's skills have always been at least partially obscured by the tenuousness of his vocals, the sparseness of his arrangements, and the full-wank sprawl of his bandmates. I Am a Cold Rock, like Greatest Palace Music, isolates and highlights Oldham-as-scribe, dragging his compositions into new, unbroken light.

-Amanda Petrusich, August 17th, 2004

I Am a Cold Rock, I Am Dull Grass may not have been the first tribute disc in 2004 to honor Will Oldham, but it was the first one to do so without Oldham appearing on it in any of his incarnations — Palace, Palace Songs, Palace Music, Palace Brothers or even Bonnie "Prince" Billy. Oldham's latest alter ego reinvented his older, sparser self with a set of slick remakes on Bonnie "Prince" Billy Sings Palace Music, thereby beating Tract Records to the punch, but the effort from the unheralded little Indiana label is actually a far more interesting take on the indie icon's idiosyncratic songs. Tract used a mix of Oldham's established fellow indie travelers and a group of lesser-known admirers (handpicked from an open call for submissions) to craft a marvelously diverse take on Oldham's catalog. (Most of the open-call selections were found on a limited-release second disc available only with the first 500 copies.) While some of the lesser-known artists' versions sound quite promising (particularly Jeffrey Luck Lucas' "Agnes, Queen of Sorrow," Diana Darby's "Valentine's Day," and Joel Martin's "Wolf Among Wolves"), the real treats are the reverential versions turned in by the more familiar players. Calexico's desert noir take on "I Send My Love to You" recalls the Tucson collective's sublime acoustic ballads on Aerocalexico; Iron & Wine's Sam Beam shows his natural affinity with Oldham's Gothic side by simply transporting "We All, Us Three, Will Ride," further South; Pinetop Seven's cover of "A Minor Place" gives the gloomy Bonnie "Prince" Billy dirge a joyous makeover replete with banjo, strings and full chorus. Sorry About Dresden ("All Gone, All Gone"), Scout Niblett ("Trudy Dies") and Adrian Crowley ("West Palm Beach") also turn in unorthodox and vibrant versions. It's almost impossible not to think of other acts — both new and old — you'd like to hear take a crack at Oldham, but this humble little collection of 30 songs confirms that he is one of the finest songwriters, a national treasure whose stark and profound minor-key laments prove universal under any adaptation.