I complain about country artists pawning off their roots for the pop phenomena that made superstars out of the likes of Garth Brooks and Shania Twain, so I’d be remiss to not shake my head when someone takes country and stuffs it full of pomp, even if that artist happens to be Will Oldham. Country’s finest moments typically arise from rustic charms and bleeding-heart emotions, almost always the melancholy of the longing or loss of love (or shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die). But while Oldham never dresses up these songs with processed hooks and glittering gloss, he does pour on enough syrup to make these songs too sticky to accept at face value. And it’s not even the production and arrangements that make this one a disappointment—it’s in the lyrics. Oldham’s varying range of success in the word department has always ensured some skepticism at face value, but these are some of the flattest and least original phrases he’s ever cooked up. It’s a tragedy almost as grand as the ones he inflates over the course of these thirteen songs.
Beware is a fitting warning for those who approach it. While his faithful will likely applaud such a dramatic choice, it’s not easy to take an album that aspires for lofty measure too seriously. With Oldham once again slipping into his Bonnie “Prince” Billy persona, there’s an artificiality to each exquisitely labored emotive breath, and he lingers too long on sorrows too abstract to understand or too commonplace to take notice. Souping up these tracks with strident back-up vocalists and a cluster of instruments is troubling, and since the album rarely takes flight above a wandering mid-tempo drag, it guarantees a sluggish pace and murky lack of finesse. Sooner or later, you’re going to start wishing there was a power ballad or dance track on here, no matter how much it would derail continuity—that’s a troubling place to be to wish that Oldham would just up and sell out.
On “Heart’s Arms,” he conveys the sense of lovelorn melancholy that’s become typical of country, but draws them out so far over the slovenly tempo that he makes them sound like the most intrinsically devastating laments ever asked: “Why don’t you write me anymore? Have you found something as good just next door?” Then with “I Don’t Belong to Anyone,” he stakes a place in Dolly Parton territory, but layering on the strings, flamenco-lilts and female accompaniment makes what might have been a quaint (but derivative) gem into an overblown gaffe. “There Is Something I Have to Say” is blessedly cleaner, crisper and richer for the absence of instrumental litter; simply because it leaves breathing room defines it as one of the album’s best cuts.
When he goes a bit more up-tempo on “You Don’t Love Me” (with jerking fiddles and handclaps), he does little more than rewrite Tammy Wynette-style ballads, only increasing the quotient of flabby lyricism and the jiggle of overwrought supplements—did those horns need to be so broadly unappealing? When he mourns that, “You say my kissing rates a six on a scale of one to ten/And you wouldn't pass the time with me except you're tired of all your friends,” it’s difficult not to find those two lines to be uncomfortably positioned, vaguely swapping between childish and mature whisperings. Following that is “You Are Lost,” which indeed does get lost as it climbs towards the heavens when it would be much more comfortable on a porch swing. And the more exuberant the music sounds, more often that not, Oldham just sounds even more resigned, like a sage with nothing great to say, so he mumbles beneath the louder choir so he can be drowned out but not be faulted for not trying.
“My Life’s Work” is more successful at “bringing the noise,” with long oohing backups emphasizing the dark drama of the downbeat John Denver-esque ballad. And he gets out of his own way, coveting the spotlight instead of shrinking from it, and belting the regretful but scintillating, “This morning we found no love at all/I bust a hole in the ceiling so the light will flow,” and the passionately delivered (for Oldham, that is) refrain, “I take this load on/It is my life work.” There’s also “Without Work You Have Nothing,” which rolls along lackadaisically on a bed of strings and guitars, assisted by a gentle harmonica and breathy back-ups—the impressive melody not only survives the sonic onslaught, but is also bolstered by its magnanimous gusto. But before that, “I Am Goodbye” is an amusing little trifle that is actually quite fun when culled from its support, but feels contextually out of place from the rest of the record.
Since grandiosity makes the spare charms of country music sound bloated and over-sentimental, Oldham is working with the deck stacked against him. Even if he managed to find proper nuance and intrigue to inflect his writing, they’d still be clumsily overwrought, scouring elsewhere for comparably simplistic skill. It’s not just that there’s a lack of great songs (which there is) but more critically that the album’s production is tainted by too much unnecessary clutter. While a stripped down version wouldn’t notch this one up with Billy’s best efforts, it would certainly make this exercise a little less excruciating. Emerging with a halfway decent album is a bit of a miracle considering the number of mistakes he makes, but that it comes from Oldham marks it just short of devastating.
"Beware" is on sale March 17, 2009 from Drag City.
