Audio By Carbonatix
On this superb collaboration, Matt Sweeney and Will Oldham (aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy) play ballads with the intimacy of bunkmates, conjuring a parched farm where panther-girls and man-donkeys toil, love and spank one another. The sweet, absurd imagery would sound cloying in most hands, but Oldham’s un-self-conscious delivery makes his scenes as plain as distressed leather, and Sweeney (of Chavez and Zwan) is the perfect co-worker, adding fragile harmonies and a guitar that props up the melodies like a fence post. The spare but kind tone suggests a melding of English folk with the grit of American country, and while the album is never far from desolation–as on the grueling “Blood Embrace”–its best moments are the most graceful, like “Beast for Thee,” which is ready to pat your neck as you die in its arms.
