Basically a more pastoral cousin of Billy's 1999 masterpiece
I See a Darkness; thus it largely avoids the depression and weirdness of that one in favor of a string-drenched, "pretty" folkiness (with female backing vocals). Sometimes this works, and is unbelievably gorgeous ("Then The Letting Go", "No Bad News") and sometimes it degenerates into endless, tuneless nonsense ("God's Small Song"). The two best tracks on this album by far are the most reminiscent of his previous work, probably not coincidentally. "Strange Form of Life" has probably the single most heart-rending guitar riff of the entire decade, and "The Seedling" is pretty terrifying. It's probably worth picking this thing up for those two tracks alone, but it's kind of depressing to see such an iconoclastic artist systematically remove all the things that made him special, all the things that once separated him from every other wispy-voiced troubadour with an acoustic guitar.
MY RATING:
6.8
Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - "Strange Form of Life"
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