Pitchfork

A few weeks back, at a secret Bonnie "Prince" Billy show, I made a rookie mistake, presuming that I knew what Will Oldham was up to, even a decade after having first been mystified by his music. Brashly assuming the seasick music I'd heard that night (courtesy of "Prince" and "Cockfighter," aka Matt Sweeney) to be a taster for his soundtrack work for British director Jason Massot's documentary about sailors in the bustling Rotterdam seaport. The newswire quoted me blabbering expertly on "songs about spanking, donkeys (but not spanking donkeys), and allusions to creatures such as the 'Super Wolf' and 'Panther Girl'." I'd asserted that there couldn't possibly be more songs about sailors and the sea.

Was I ever wrong. Not only were the dozen songs I'd heard completely new, but none of them referenced the soundtrack for Seafarers at all, save the fashion sense of the sardine-packed Williamsburg crowd itself. Sailor is the new Camo: Will-fully-induced scurvy, scruffy pirate beards, ironic bicep-tual hula girl tats, moth-riddled wooly peacoats, salty squints, and crooked seamen caps are replacing Radar hats, olive-green fatigues, boutique-bought dogtags, and $100 paratrooper pants at a frightening pace. Again, Oldham surfs ahead of the Zeitgeist, much as he did by anticipating skillet-licking necrofolkia with There Is No-One What Will Take Care of You and Days in the Wake.

Like Oldham's previous seafaring soundtrack work, these four songs, dedicated to rough-hewn human flotsam from Sweden, Polynesia, Croatia and Nigeria, are instrumental-- Oldham, brother Paul and David Bird carving out four different variations on a melancholic theme. Not quite sea shanties, the gently finger-flicked notes sway to and fro, creaking like frayed ropes and salt-cracked lips on a stilled day, destinationless, and surrounded by the infinite waters. Each character bobs and pitches on the slight fluctuations of shimmering saline, their movements imperceptible yet in motion. The order of notes is uncertain and always changing, leaving me to wonder if the characters are but Abyss-like apparitions raised from the sea itself.

That said, the little nuances of the Oldhams' and Bird's playing are what keep the notes afloat on the despondent, drunken music bed, and their soft focus makes for more return listens than Oldham's past scores for The Broken Giant or Slitch. The musicians enter in about a minute apart on "Sapele", setting up slight ripples between each others' notes while open strings and tube-warmed amps buzz towards the horizon, accompanying protagonist "Lars". The smallest of sounds, such as the wheezing of air organ and ungrounded fuzz bubble up on "Emmanuel" and shine as beacons, their minimal gestures conveying the sad depths that lie beneath the sailors' brutish exteriors. Could Will Oldham be the next Jean Genet, using the fragile-feminine to trace the savage-masculine, or does this just reinforce that incidental music is the next post-rock?