Lie Down in the Light
Bonnie “Prince” Billy
Drag City Records.
Everyone knows it: becoming lovingly obsessed with any album boils down to more than the album itself. It’s a matter of time; the timing that sees people and seasons come and go, moods rise and fall, priorities accumulate or decompose. Timing played a definitive role in my introduction to Lie Down in the Light, the latest from the prolific Will Oldham that struck deep in my travel-weary bones.
I’d landed in Boston, stripped of an Asian summer’s humidity and longing for subtlety or English street-names. I found myself wide awake on cold farmhouse floorboards in the twilight hours, hearing silence and recalling ghosts fulfilling their workdays on the other side of the globe. Despite the jetlag, my head was clearer than ever and once-scattered priorities now seemed simple and clear. Such quaint notions of friends and family became revelatory; themes that link the buoyant and beautiful Lie Down in the Light. It’s Oldham at his metaphysical best, weaving between the sunlight and shadows of rural existence, and thanks to some perfect timing, among my favourite albums of 2008.
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