There Is No One What Will Take

Will Oldham | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (June 7, 1993)
• Original Release Date: June 15, 1993
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Drag City
• ASIN: B0000019PU
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #184,637 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

It sounds as if it were recorded in the back of a barn or on the front porch of a farm in Kentucky with a single microphone to simulate the feel of an old Folkways field recording. The ensemble cast mixes and matches banjos and poorly strummed acoustic guitars with the occasional synthesizer piercing through the mix. The songs have an odd old-world fascination about them ("Riding," "I Had a Good Father and Mother," "I Tried to Stay Healthy For You") and the singer's delivery is untutored by pitch. --Rob O'Connor

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Old time music, March 26, 2001

By 

ensiform (Dallas, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: There Is No One What Will Take (Audio CD)

Oldham tacks a "Brothers" onto the Palace monicker, perhaps intentionally harking back to a time when groups were thus forthrightly named. And indeed, the music this time around is more Bill Monroe than Sonic Youth - there's even a sort of yodel, or a feeble hooting anyway, on "I Had a Good Mother And Father." A more gloomy and daunting track is "Riding," a throwback to the darkest of folk ballads, voices from the grave that tell of incest, abductions and worse. Oldham relies on these old tales and draws deeply from the hillbilly's Pentacostal fear of God. God, sin, prayer, and walking with Jesus are the foundations of the album. "Idle Hands Are the Devil's Playthings" is told as a straightforward morality tale; "(I Was Drunk At the) Pulpit" is a rambling, breathless first-person tale of debauchery though "I knew it was wrong." However, Oldham is not a hick, but has a poet's gift of language. "The sunlight was stronger to my Church-dark

widened eyes," runs an early line in "Pulpit." It aptly encompasses Oldham's struggle with man's baser and nobler urges.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A blurry photograph, September 27, 2000

By 

Rob Damm - See all my reviews

This review is from: There Is No One What Will Take (Audio CD)

This music is the real deal. It never sounds stagey or forced. It sounds like Oldham has lived these arcane hillbilly dirges. His voice sounds so weary and threadbare... a cracked, keening mountain tenor that could chill Ralph Stanley's blood. The songs are odd patchworks of post-modernist wanderings and reconstructed folk ballads. The band is wonderfully unprofessional, stepping all over each other and sounding totally off-kilter. The recording is homespun... that's what adds the emotional edge and works this disc deep into your heart. It's a blurry photograph of a ravaged landscape.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My Musical Epiphany...., April 18, 2006

By 

Mitchell R. King "lord-infernus" (FLORIDA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: There Is No One What Will Take (Audio CD)

Ahem, I have some glorious memories attached to this record. I had just moved to Atlanta, Ga for school when it came out. I went into Wuxtry records(still the best record store ever!!) and was looking for something new, since the small town I had moved from had no indie stores. I was already a fan of Royal Trux, so I spotted the Drag City logo on the back and decided to buy it. I listened to that CD religously every day for about a year. I love everything about it. How the band sounds like they might fall apart at any second, but never really does. I imagined them playing in a barn on a red-dirt floor with only one mic to record into and the guitarist having to step up to the mic for his solo's. Will channels the southern-gothic ambience of Flannery O' Connor and Carson McCullers perfectly. This made me a life-long fan of Mr. Oldham and I have purchased every release of his since. But since this is the one that hooked me, I always find myself going back to it. Besides, in my opinion, he hasn't recorded a finer song than "Merida" since. I remember seeing him on the "I See A Darkness" tour and I asked him to play it, and he said he didn't remember how too, I was so shocked!! Will is still turning out the great tunes, I recomend this one first since it is one of the most primitive, if you enjoy it, then you will love them all!!