For this collaboration, Will Oldham wrote all the lyrics and gave them to Matt Sweeney (guitarist for Skunk, Chavez, and Zwan), who then wrote the music. As Oldham's lyrics are the centerpiece, Sweeney wisely tries to write the music he'd think Oldham would write for these words instead of creating something more typical of his own work. There's no big buzzsaw guitar sound and no complex monster guitar riffs to be found.
The one time the music ends up sounding not like Oldham's is the album's weakest track, "Blood Embrace." A tedious guitar line, largely unaccompanied, repeats and repeats for eight minutes, and a gimmicky bit of movie dialogue related to the lyrics intercedes, interrupting Oldham's impassioned but vulnerable delivery. The rest of the album is more typical Oldham fare. In fact, those put off by the huge production of Sings Greatest Palace Music and longing for a simpler, more raw delivery will find much to enjoy here.
However, the lyrics for Superwolf seem a lot less personal than his last few albums (perhaps fitting since having someone else write the music also goes to make it impersonal, despite the generally good job Sweeney does with the music). Oldham makes old school Louisville references to a seafaring life ("I would like to be dead in a shark's mouth" and "There's a hole in the sky through which I must fly to get to my grave in the sea") and writes songs from others' perspectives (despite the male voice, the narrator of "What Are You" yearns for her lover's "twisted fingers in me, in the rain with my sun dress torn off of me"). In all, the songs seem pleasantly universal, which is a bit of a disappointment given how devastatingly personal Ease Down the Road and, more so, Master and Everyone are.
With Oldham's gift for gab, the songs can still be amazing though. The poetry of "bed is for sleeping, love is making, you know love, I am yours for the taking" is only outdone by heartbreaking album closer "I Gave You," where Oldham lists off all he has given for love only to be left "standing empty, helpless, and bare... and you, you have vanished into the air." Perhaps, given the contrast between this song and Master and Everyone, you could say this too was written from someone else's perspective.
Or maybe Oldham really has changed. The metaphor of wolves from that album is continued here in two songs, however, the context of the metaphor has changed. In Master and Everyone, Oldham sang "she loves a soul I'll never be" because that love was for something he's not ("a man among men") instead of for what he is ("a wolf among wolves"). Here, he is loved for being a wolf in "A Beast for Thee" and "Lift Us Up." Perhaps, that is, until she "vanished into the air."
