Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Wolfroy Goes To Town (Domino) **** (From York Press)

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Wolfroy Goes To Town (Domino) ****

11:38am Friday 13th January 2012 in CD reviews By Charles Hutchinson

APOLOGIES that Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s album slipped beyond our radar on its release in late October. Especially as fans of Will Oldham, the man behind the ‘Prince’ moniker, will be saving up to shell out for next month’s re-issue of a quintet of his Palace Brothers, Palace Songs and Palace music albums.

Oldham has many guises but only one magnificent beard and while the beard grows ever bushier, Wolfroy Goes To Town has the Kentucky singer-songwriter shaving his music to its most sparse and quiet in a long while on his 16th album.

Johnny Cash went the same way for his late-career American Recordings with Rick Rubin, and Wolfroy has a reverence and grace to it, and a subtlety that is broken only by a surprising boyhood revelation in New Tibet. Elsewhere, Angel Olsen’s voice matches her name, a fresh joy on Oldham’s best set of new but ancient songs till those re-issues come along.