Pitchfork

Preview EPs have a limited lifespan, and Cursed Sleep is no exception: one B-side oddity and two songs from Bonnie "Prince" Billy's forthcoming full-length. Since this disc-- really more of a single-- is bound to be eclipsed in a month, listeners must treat it as a superficial preview of grander ambitions. In fact, the new album (The Letting Go) is the legitimate heir to the straggling elegies of 2003's Master and Everyone. But, apparently, fans can't wait to discover how the erratic Will Oldham has consolidated his ghoulish antiquity with the sort of burnished pop melodies found on Greatest Palace Hits and Superwolf. Of the EP's three songs, only the titular track reveals any hints of a great synthesis. The other two are seductive cult songs that emphasize texture over tunefulness; they sacrifice emotions and choruses for clever flamboyancy. There's nothing wrong with that emphasis, though, and Oldham's songs exude an effortless coolness and humor even as they taunt the singer's wounded heart.

"Cursed Sleep", The Letting Go's first single, ornaments a conventional Western folk song with all sorts of fanciful effects: clinking percussion, squeaking keyboards, and a fitful orchestra whose flourishes and trills sound like they're hurled out of a doddering electric guitar. Drums and violins are drenched in mud and soot, and smooth classic rock emanates from the fringes. Sifting through this debris, the chorus reveals itself as one giant, garish shriek. It's an unkempt arrangement, soiled and torn, barely held together by Oldham's disconcertingly confident and centered voice.

The single's B-sides are vastly more irregular and inventive. "The Signifying Wolf" starts as a parody of 1990s lo-fi, but the fuzz escalates and the vocals dampen until the whole track takes on an impression of saliva-choked convulsion. The voices are somewhere between comatose and possessed: huffing hollers, drooled mumbles, and the sort of bar-band rhythm section that people throw glass bottles at. It's an entire song covered in orgasms, asphyxiations, and pagan chants, and the production lets vaporous feedback roll around the perimeter. "God's Small Song" is nearly the opposite: calm-before-the-storm apprehension that's both narcoleptic and nervous. Oldham wanders lazily through long, yawning vocals and sun-spangled guitar. But, for all that abstraction and foreboding, the smiling chorus strikes and evaporates like a vague recollection.

Without the context of The Letting Go, Cursed Sleep is mostly content to stand as a slender digest of Oldham exotica. Whatever the songs lack in ambition, they make up for in charisma. But, of course, they're only brief-- and rather meager-- preliminaries. Unless you make it a point to listen to music in duplicate, you may as well continue to wait for the final product.