Will Oldham
Black/Rich Music (Drag City)
by Aaron Lazenby
If you know of Will Oldham, chances are it is by one of the various, shifting pseudonyms under which he records his music. Either as Palace Brothers, Palace Music or just plain Palace, Oldham has released six LPs worth of vulnerable, dysfunctional Kentucky storytelling. Oldham’s plaintive warble brings to mind a somehow emotionally wounded Neil Young, if Young hailed from the Appalachians instead of the Great White North.
Music, however, is only a portion of Oldham’s creative legacy. At the tender age of 17, Oldham had a sizable role in John Sayles’ Matewan, and another in a film titled Thousand Pieces of Gold. Oldham rounded out his filmography with his portrayal of Baby Jessica’s father in Everybody’s Baby, the high point of that lost genre of TV movies portraying the real-life struggles of babies who have fallen into wells. Eventually, he retired from acting to travel and focus more closely on his music.
Oldham may have quit acting, but not the film industry altogether. And it’s a good thing. His latest release, Black/Rich Music, is a collection of music from the film The Broken Giant. Previously only available as a limited-release giveaway with Oldham’s album Arise Therefore as Songs Put Together for The Broken Giant, the collection’s mixture of incidental music and lyrical gems is a must-have for any Oldham collector and an excellent entry into the man’s work.
Fundamentally, Black/Rich Music consists of only four songs, all played entirely on acoustic guitar or organ. What’s beautiful about this disc is the way Oldham breaks down three of these songs into their constituent parts. The album-opener, “Organ: Do What You Will Do,” sets the tone with the longing of a simple, wheezing organ and offers a skeleton of the song that immediately follows. “Do What You Will Do” is a full-fledged acoustic guitar song (with words and everything) about devotion and longing. Black/Rich Music‘s final song “Guitar: Do What You Will Do” compliments Oldham’s experiment with this melody with simple but nimble guitar work and provides a satisfying emotional coda.
The “Do What You Will Do” cycle works like sonic cubism, dismantling the song into several self-sustaining parts and illuminating the things that make it alternately desperate and vulnerable, warm and sad. This formula follows successfully with “Allowance,” and “Black/Rich Tune” – the groundwork laid by organ and guitar, then followed by simple acoustic guitar narratives.
“The Risen Lord” is the only track on Black/Rich Music to avoid this scrutiny, buttressed as it is by lyrics from D.H. Lawrence. It’s the disc’s most sinister-sounding tune, with cryptic words about spirituality and sensuality, and rounds out this delicate and beautiful disc. If writing music for film continues to inspire music like this, let’s hope Oldham doesn’t abandon the cinema altogether.
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