Beware- Bonnie Prince Billy

I have had a love/hate relationship for years with Will Oldham.  Part of me has never liked the rustic mumblings of his early work as Palace, but part of me kept trying to figure out what he was saying.  This new album under his current working project of Bonnie Prince Billy has been labeled a country rock/outlaw country album and I think that is more misleading.  If you wanted to hang a label on this I would say it  has more of a Bakersfield sound than anything else.  Will has lined some of Chicago's finest jazz musicians to create a musically challenging backdrop to his beat poet/country hybrid.   The lyrics volley back and forth between traditional country fare and his odd ball philosophical entrapments that make his best work so captivating.

I am not quite sure what the next step in Bonnie Prince Billy's journey is but I am more than willing to follow.