The Letting Go

Bonnie Prince Billy, Bonnie"prince"billy&matt Sweeney | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (September 19, 2006)
• Original Release Date: 2006
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Drag City
• ASIN: B000H0MMKY
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #92,808 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Love Comes To Me

2. Strange Form Of Life

3. Wai

4. Cursed Sleep

5. No Bad News

6. Cold & Wet

7. Big Friday

8. Lay And Love

9. The Seedling

10. Then The Letting Go

11. God's Small Song

12. I Called You Back

13. Bonus Track 1

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Having long recorded as Palace Music or Palace, the enigmatic, elusive Bonnie "Prince" Billy continues to confound musical expectations. His latest may well be his loveliest, a series of meditations and tone poems on love and mortality, with the autumnal strains of a chamber quartet and the vocal counterpoint of Dawn McCarthy supporting Billy's tremulous expression of his surreal, stream-of-consciousness lyricism. Results range from the dreamy, bluesy "Cursed Sleep" and the evocation of a British madrigal on "No Bad News" to the discordant propulsion of "The Seedling" and the call and response of the folkish "Then the Letting Go." It all fits together in a manner that defies categorization and dares the listener to resist its aural seduction. --Don McLeese

Product Description

Import LP vinyl pressing of the 2006 full length release from Bonnie Prince Billie (AKA Will Oldham). 12 tracks featuring the singles 'Cold And Wet' and 'Cursed Sleep'.The Letting Go is an overwhelming undertaking. There are strings-lovely charts that do so much more than just trace chord changes up and down the neck. Arrangements by Ryder McNair and Nico Muhly are threaded throughout the record, augmenting a simple quintet of players to provide a sixth sense. The deceptive nature of his band is on display from the top. `Filthy' Jim White is known far and wide for his resource behind the drum kit and he proves it song after song, with sensitivity that provokes dynamic variety from skins, an acoustic depth to the room. Paul Oldham's bass is a feeling accompaniment to Bonny's guitar, played with brotherly clairvoyance and constancy. Young Emmett Kelly's clean electric guitar lines roam within the web and suddenly shine, are blues and folk and R&B in shifting turn, guilelessly tactic and soulfully expressive. And up front with Bonny is the bewitching Dawn McCarthy of Faun Fables. Her vocal flights on those records can hardly prepare one for the intimacy and empathy of her harmonies and other voices on The Letting Go. Domino. --This text refers to the Vinyl edition.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Recommended, October 5, 2006

By 

gordo_aka_thegrunter "gordo_aka_thegrunter" (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Letting Go (Audio CD)

This might be the best CD that has come out this year. It may be Will Oldham's best CD since "Viva Last Blues." It may be better than "Viva Last Blues" although these are two different styled CDs. "The letting go" has a mostly very mellow sound. Almost every song is beautiful. The string and guitar melodies are uplifting. Will Oldham's voice is grounding, it is the familiar voice you have heard for the past decade or so. Dawn McCarthy's voice will then again lift you up. McCarthy's voice is a fantastic companion to Oldham's. Other singers/bands have tried to use a female voice to echo or accompany the lead vocal and it has often become irritating. This is not the case with "the letting go," McCarthy's accompaniment adds so much to the album but without taking away from Oldham. I haven't listened to a Will Oldham album since "Ease down the Road." This makes me want to go back and listen to those albums I have missed. One song in particular, "The Seedling" (I believe) has a different sound than the rest of the album. It has a harsher sound, but is still a good song.
This is a great introduction if you are new to Oldham or if you are returning listener.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow., December 12, 2006

By 

Nathaniel P. Foster "NPFoster" (New Haven, Ct. United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Letting Go (Audio CD)

The Letting Go has more than its fair share of hauntingly, achingly beautiful moments. It may be a cliche at this point to use the words "haunting" and "aching" in a review of Will Oldham's music, but music like this defies easy description (as Oldham's lyrics avoid easy, literal narratives), being so unlike anything out there. These songs evoke exquisitly beautiful emotional landscapes composed of memory, dreams, longing, desire, regret, hope, composed in lyrics hinting at the subconscious desires, fears, and haunted dreams of each song's voice. The music itself traverses many musical lands, sometimes within the same song, recalling bleak Nordic vistas (mainly), the Southern delta, and even Renaissance England. The instruments, almost entirely acoustic (with the exception of electric guitar), are perfectly suited to the songs, with a heavy emphasis on strings (guitar, violin, cello) that pair perfectly with the tremor in Oldham's voice. Will Oldham is obviously not satisfied to travel down musical roads already well mapped out. Thankfully, since in pursuit of his experimental muse he has taken himself, and us his listeners, to some strange and gorgeous places. It is a shame that one or two reviewers with an adolescent appreciation of music can alter the number of stars a work like The Letting Go receives overall, but in any case it is only an Amazon review. This music doesn't need any other affirmation other than its own inherent qualities. It speaks for itself.

11 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Inevitable, as if it grew out of the ground..., February 9, 2007

By 

Artie Fisk "artiefisk" (New Paltz, NY, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Letting Go (Audio CD)

This CD is for me, Will Oldham's finest thus far as a solo artist. It has all the sleepy, druggy quality you expect from him, but the backing vocals here provide a crystalline, almost fairport-convention-ish counterpoint to Oldham's soft, broken-in, guy-down-the-block-who's-deeper-than-you-thought-he-was voice. Will is crunchier than crunchy in terms of his hippiedom these days, but the music never suffers from hippie pretensions. The way he pronounces "stairs" on "Bad News" alone should tell you all you need to know about him and his "thing." To those who are mystified or put to sleep by this, you've missed a key factor in appreciating this stuff: it's meant to be modern folk music for mellow times. It isn't party music, and doesn't attempt to "rock" at all, and that's OK. He does three songs IN A ROW in waltz time, for chrissakes. The real kicker is that Oldham is so accomplished at 3/4 that you don't even notice until the third waltz that that's what you're hearing. This record has charms that many "mainstream" listeners might miss, and that's OK. If you wear sweatpants and watch "American Idol" and find Paris Hilton fascinating and are all broken up over the death of Anna Nicole Smith, this CD ain't for you. You may listen to your Coldplay and feel "sophisticated" and leave Bonnie Prince Billy alone, thanks very much. If you like to put on music, lay down and close your eyes and actually LISTEN and be transported somewhere, then you probably already own this. If you don't, then purchase it with all speed. It's mellow and satisfying, like drinking good red wine or reading a good mid-period Richard Brautigan novel. Nice.