Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – Is It The Sea?

When you come up with as much viable material as Will Oldham (aka Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy) and have a penchant for the most bizarre of cover versions, putting together a setlist for your new tour could probably be more painful than most would imagine. Yet ‘Is It The Sea?’ is a perfectly compiled list of the lesser known gems and title tracks from his many albums. Live reincarnations find ‘Bed Is For Sleeping’ and ‘Wolf Among Wolves’ at their mercurial best, flaunting their fragility with the various musical parts crumbling in your hand as the tracks progress. Oldham has a style that manages to sound contemporary alongside Iron & Wine and Bon Iver, helped further by his DIY aesthetic, yet his vocals still call on the swing crooners and folk storytellers of over half a century ago. Recorded throughout his 2006 tour of Scotland and Ireland this is a live album with atmosphere included free of charge, not just a few studio extras and some token clapping and whooping latched on the end for effect; although there is quite a lot of clapping and whooping. More than anything else it is the use of such a catalogue of sounds that allow you to feel like you are actually there, the rise and fall of fiddles and flutes add depth to the voices, which from Oldham and his band are by far the most enchanting instruments on the record.

If anything, it slows too much in the middle and at times yearns to kick into gear but lacks a raucous, loud song that pushes itself along rather than floats. But do not be kidded by labels of folk and alt. country, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy has far much more to offer than they might suggest and maybe even more live than on any studio recordings to date.