Newsflash: New Bonnie Prince Billy album

BONNIE 'PRINCE¹ BILLY

- releases new album -
The Letting Go
out 18 September 2006 on Domino

album preceded by barns new single Cursed Sleep (out 24 July)

http://www.dominorecordco.com

There are guitars, and strings. Amid the swell of sound and anticipation, there is a voice singing along, playing a part. More swells. Then the Bonnie 'Prince¹ intones:
When the numbers / Get too high
Of the dead / flying through the sky
Oh I / Don¹t know why / Love comes to me

So begins The Letting Go. And so we realize how much we¹ve missed Bonny since the last time, whenever it was. It¹s always a fine moment to hear from him again.

The Letting Go is an overwhelming undertaking. As mentioned, there are strings-lovely charts that do so much more than just trace chord changes up and down the neck. Arrangements by Ryder McNair and Nico Muhly are threaded throughout the record, augmenting a simple quintet of players to provide a sixth sense. The deceptive nature of his band is on display from the top. 'Filthy' Jim White is known far and wide for his resource behind the drum kit and he proves it song after song, with sensitivity that provokes dynamic variety from skins, an acoustic depth to the room. Paul Oldham¹s bass is a feeling accompaniment to Bonny's guitar, played with brotherly clairvoyance and constancy. Young Emmett Kelly¹s clean electric guitar lines roam within the web and suddenly shine, are blues and folk and r'n'b in shifting turn, guilelessly tactic and soulfully expressive. And up front with Bonny is the bewitching Dawn McCarthy of Faun Fables. Her vocal flights on those records can hardly prepare one for the intimacy and empathy of her harmonies and other voices on The Letting Go.

After all this, a set of songs that are lovely and take their turn as favourite; every day, another one.

Love comes to she and he that wait. And while they wait, let them know about

The Letting Go.