Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Master and Everyone
(Drag City)
"And it's a hard life for a man with no wife, babe it's a hard life God makes you live. But without it, don't doubt it, you don't even have your tears to give."
Bonnie "Prince" Billy's new album, Master and Everyone, finds Oldham creating deceptively quiet and approachable songs that are much more introspective than 2001's Ease Down the Road. Instead of dealing with lovers and their other lovers in a giddy, randy manner, Oldham concentrates just on himself, using that same mocking tone to pick apart why he is incapable of feeling and why he can't love the women that love him.
Album lead-off "The Way" packs a potent pop chorus behind its acoustic guitar, sweeping string accompaniment, and ambient electronic warbling. Lyrically this pop chorus of "love me the way I love you" is a tongue-in-cheek paper-thin deceit. In this opening song, Oldham provides excuses for why he can't commit to marriage (e.g., "without children to grow"), but these excuses are only excuses. Later songs fully reveal that this "way I love you" is not much of a love at all.
In "Maundering," Oldham also seems to be shifting blame. He blames the woman's desire for instant stability in the line "I never wanted to be what you wanted to see, and I wish that she would be patient with me." He even claims "I'm going to find something true," all the while singing the chorus of "maundering," implying he is wandering disconnectedly through life, unable to satisfy even the most patient. The backing vocals of Edith Frost (and the several other uses of female backing vocals on the album) add a more human element, making it clear Oldham has not given up hope for himself in this song.
In "Wolf Among Wolves" Oldham admits "she loves a soul I've never been," while completely stripping away the human elements from his self-analysis. Oldham continues in the chorus, "Why can't I be loved as what I am: A wolf among wolves, and not as a man among men?" relating himself to an animal incapable of feeling. The arrangement here is the most minimal. Oldham plays the guitar and (audibly) taps his feet. In the bridge, Oldham even hums the main melody, sitting down his guitar. The loneliness of the arrangement brings power to the words, as Oldham appears his most antisocial, finding himself unable to feel, let alone reciprocate those feelings.
This currency of feeling is used symbolically in "Ain't You Wealthy, Ain't You Wise?" and "Lessons From What's Poor." To the emotionally "poor," the gift of love is like food, not easily received but life-sustaining. Even though Oldham will question what soul the woman in his life is actually loving, she is "wealthy" in that she has the full capability to love, and Oldham asks "ain't you made to give to me," admitting even though he can't feel love himself that his ego forces him to need being loved. As the woman gives of her wealth, Oldham sings "now you've seen the evil eye, hold me closer while I cry" as sex leads to nothing but further exposure of his frailty.
This need to feel love ultimately leads to the symbol of master and servant used in the album title and title track, as those with wealth of emotion ultimately have power over those who need more to be loved than to love. In this brief song, Oldham sounds like he is attacking. The woman headlong and rashly states she no longer loves him, and Oldham launches into a tirade and in a sing-songy fashion declares "I'm now free of master and everyone." The inclusion of "and everyone" adds much more depth here, as the breakup not only provides Oldham the often-used excuse of "room to breathe" (as he cites in "Hard Life") from the relationship, but rather room to breathe from all mankind.
When Oldham asks his woman "Three Questions," Oldham makes it clear all he expects from love and also why the love he returns is so empty. He first asks whether she would wear a locket he made if all it contained was a "piece of rock." He then asks if a day came "where the earth threatened to open up" whether she would help him to survive by giving him half of what sustenance she could find. From these two requests, Oldham makes it clear that the love he gives is vapid but that the love he receives must be full and life-affirming, which leads to the final request.
After an accordion interlude, Oldham asks his final question: if "everyone finally calls me out and says that I'm the worst," would she be the first to support him and say that in her eyes "he's the best." So even with evidence in full view (not only when he is "called out," but also in these ten songs—in these ten admissions) she must be able to not just look past it but ignore it, perhaps supporting his own claims that any love he is given must also be empty (for another "soul").
In the emotional climax of the movie "Adaptation," Donald Kaufman informs his twin brother Charlie that what defines a person is who and what he loves, not what loves him back. Perhaps then Will Oldham is a recursive loop, as all he is able to love is himself, and his life's blood is finding others to fuel that self-love. So in this quiet little album of simple acoustic guitar songs and Oldham's first true use of hum and wirr from electronics to fill the background, Oldham has perhaps cast his darkest tale to date. Not one of death, loss, and pain, but of being dull to it all.
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