"Lie Down in the Light" Bonnie "Prince" Billy

I love this album. Why beat around the bush, and fill up space with useless hyperbole and rambling? When I first listened to this album I was immediately reminded of Iron & Wine's incredible "Shepherd's Dog", in that there was a noticeable step in the quality of the songwriting, the production, and the approachability of the entire endeavor.

Bonnie "Prince" Billy's 2006 release, "The Letting Go" was a good album. There were certainly moments that were better than the rest, moments that caused me to physically sit up and take note of a particular track. But those moments pale in comparison to the similar incidents that occur throughout this album. On literally every track there is a moment, sometimes at the very end, sometimes in the middle, sometimes only implied, but there is always a moment that I look forward to.

On each and every track I think in my head, "Oh man, this is the track that has that amazing *insert musical descriptor here*!" On "Missing One" it's that piano line at the very end where Will Oldham sings, heartfelt and vulnerable, "Love me, Family, and just sleep to all of us" and then the song fades to silence. Gorgeous. Or on "Lie Down in the Light", where pretty much every note and every syllable and every pause and breath is perfect. Where I have to put it on repeat and I want to hear the whole album just to listen to this one song. Where if I had one song to listen to forever, right now, at this moment, it would be this one. And then you have the painful, tortuous, pregnant expectation of "Willow Trees Bend", where you know just around the next phrase, the next strum, the next note, something incredible is going to happen, something magical. But then the song ends with the quiet chirping of crickets following an elegantly understated flourish and that incredible something never happens, but maybe nestled in that expectation, that joke with no punchline, that everlasting waiting, maybe therein lies the magic.

"Lie Down in the Light" Bonnie "Prince" Billy
"Missing One" Bonnie "Prince" Billy
"Willow Trees Bend" Bonnie "Prince" Billy

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