Bonnie Prince Billy, St John at Hackney Church

Will Oldham- a.k.a Bonnie Prince Billy, Palace and more- is a haunting and unconventional artist with a style all his own.

The king of a certain genre, pitched somewhere in the Appalachian wilderness between Nick Cave’s dark intensity and Neil Young’s weathered country balladeering, his music is a kind of Gothic indie-folk.

After forays into acting in the 1980s, the Kentucky native became disillusioned with the film industry and instead focused on music. Early recordings set the tone for a long career difficult to define because of Oldham’s constantly shifting recording identity and idiosyncratic musical leanings.

His songs unravel as twisted traditional folk compositions unwound and reconstructed with deeply personal, sometimes disturbing, and always literate lyrics. Lo-Fi recording adds to the ramshackle, wailing directness of the music; Oldham’s faltering vocal even cracks on some of the notes.

An incredibly prolific artist, the high point of Oldham’s career is undoubtedly his 1999 album I See A Darkness- mournful and funereal, set firmly in a sardonic minor key. Songs like the title track and spartan country hymn Black capture the morose beauty of his craft.

Sombre in mood and often despondent in lyrical content (“but I never said I was afraid, cause dread and fear should not be confused; by dread I'm inspired, by fear I'm amused” he sings on the typically downcast Another Day Full of Dread ), these are alt-country anthems for the jaded. 

Most recent album What The Brothers Sang is a collection of Everly Brothers cover songs in collaboration with Dawn McCarthy, showing Oldham’s roots in the DNA of Americana.

A cryptic and mysterious figure haunting the fringes of American music for over twenty years, the revered Will Oldham plays in his most famous incarnation at St John at Hackney this November.