“Cursed Sleep” is the new single from Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s upcoming album The Letting Go, and it’s worth getting just to try to pronounce the names of his collaborators.
Bonnie “Prince” (aka Will Oldham) recorded The Letting Go in Iceland (let’s go ahead and assume, regardless of what the artist may claim, that this was because of an insightful article on Icelandic music he read in ALARM #22) and his string section are all Icelanders, including Una Sveinbjarnardottir and Hrafnkell Egilsson. They add a stately grandeur to Billy’s usual dark pulse on “Cursed Sleep,” and an unmistakable whale song flavor to “God’s Small Song.”
The other striking addition to Billy’s sound here is the smoky vocal accompaniment courtesy of Dawn McCarthy. Billy is often at his best with a woman in support; it adds a strengthening thread to arrangements that can otherwise be so delicate as to verge on disintegration. Both Marty Slayton on Master and Everyone and Dawn McCarthy on The Letting Go have contributed to some of his most powerful recordings.
This single consists in fact of three songs, two of which you’ll find on The Letting Go. I don’t find the chosen cuts indicative of the overall quality of the album, which arrived in the mail one day after the single. The Letting Go will soon get many deservedly positive reviews – it’s another deeply moving, organic beauty, and the Icelandic keening is a perfect complement to Billy’s patented mood.
The one thing you’ll find on this “Cursed Sleep” single that you won’t find on The Letting Go also happens to be the best part: the middle track “The Signifying Wolf,” a creaky, funky, murky voodoo chant that calls to mind the unhinged blues of Chuck E. Weiss and Captain Beefheart. As a promotional tool, “Cursed Sleep” undersells the excellence of The Letting Go, but for hardcore Billy fans (and there are no casual Billy fans), “The Signifying Wolf” is one to hunt down.
– Tom Vale
Bonnie “Prince” Billy (Drag City)