Track Listing

1. Minor Place
2. Nomadic Revery (All Around)
3. I See a Darkness
4. Another Day Full of Dread
5. Death to Everyone
6. Knockturne
7. Madeleine-Mary
8. Song for the New Breed
9. Today I Was an Evil One
10. Black
11. Raining in Darling

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #45709 in Music
• Released on: 2002-07-09
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .22 pounds

Album Description
Will Oldham's first Bonnie 'Prince' Billy release from 1999. Contains the classic 'I See A Darkness' covered by Johnny Cash.

Amazon.com's Best of 1999
"Prince" Will Oldham has always threatened to make a completely devastating album and this is it. Brooding and strikingly intimate, I See a Darkness picks through the abandoned camps of Bob Dylan and Neil Young, finding lonely tales and ragged melodies strewn about. The magic comes in the light Oldham is able to shine on these songs, rendering them both gorgeously baroque yet starkly modern. --S. Duda

Amazon.com
Will Oldham, the artist formerly known as Palace, has never been concerned with creating pop music. Oldham's forte, murder ballads, antispirituals, dead-sea chanteys, and lost-love songs, has always been "difficult," forcing the listener to confront some rather unseemly topics. Say this about Oldham, however, despite his quirks (cracking vocals, shambolic instrumentation, baroque language), at its best, his music is bracing and, often, very beautiful. That said, I See a Darkness, his second LP since abandoning the Palace moniker, is the most accessible, gorgeous, and moving record of his career. Instead of the gothic, low-fi country feel of many of his projects, Darkness comes off sounding like an early-'70s Neil Young album, comprised of a stately piano backbone and fleshed out by loose-fitting guitar strums. Stylistically, Oldham mixes things up on Darkness and his full band sounds, for once, well practiced and well recorded. Sure, Oldham is still singing about the blackness of his soul, but in between--in small bursting moments--there are bits of light, hope, and a suggestion that maybe--just maybe--there may be redemption through love. That message, presented in these carefully constructed, gently offered songs, pushes this recording beyond the usual, curious appeal of Oldham and into an entirely new realm of greatness. S. Duda

Customer Reviews

this music will take your words from you
one of the best albums....................ever. any genre, any era. my god, what a knock out. this is the latest musical persona of will oldham (whose illustrious career began as "palace/palace music/palace brothers") and many say it's his greatest achievement yet. i knew within ten seconds of first hearing this record that it had to be true. every song reaches in and squeezes the heart, gets all tangled up in your insides. you know what's great about this record? every single haunting track is memorable and affecting. every one. there isn't a single track that fades into the background...and that is a rare treat these days. and the fact that a tune as staggeringly vibrant as "a minor place" can co-exist so easily with smothering odes like "i see a darkness" is just amazing. it is, in many ways, like life.

A SPOOKY GEM
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy (aka Will Oldham) creates the scariest take on country music imaginable. In fact, this could easily be labelled 'goth country'.

His lyrics are intensley personal and his voice a deep and dark wonder. His songs are carefully crafted and arranged in an obscure warmth and frailty.

On some occasions the songs creep along steadily, on others errupt into soaring climaxes of double tracked vocals on the brink of collapse. These climaxes don't play on the usual tricks of severe dynamic change or string sections, but rather involve escalations in emotive force that ripple through you.

Will Oldham is a master songwriter, and an expert at creating sound collages and textures not usually associated with country music.

The beauty of fragility
Will Oldham combines soft and fragile melodies with atonal voices. He shows the beauty of error and the crushing power of tenderness.
Like almost everything that is "REALLY" good, you have to learn to appreciate this album. With every listening session there is something new that strikes you and slowly reveals the full beauty of this music.

This is a true jewel, in desperate need to be treasured.