Vocalist/songwriter
Will Oldham (aka
Bonnie "Prince" Billy) and guitarist
Matt Sweeney's 2005 collaboration Superwolf was a subtle and haunting affair, with
Sweeney's masterful guitar work and understated backing vocals adding counterpoint to some of
Oldham's most gently sinister songwriting. Though the duo collaborated before and since the release of Superwolf, they rekindle the spare, pristine atmosphere of the album on Superwolves, a sequel that arrives 16 years after its predecessor.
Oldham's albums always temper organic beauty with elements of depravity and bleak humor, and
Sweeney's gifts for arranging his variety of excellent guitar tones and performances bring the sublime and sacred side of
Oldham's songwriting to the forefront. After the especially menacing album opener "Make Worry for Me," Superwolves switches into a lower gear for the devotional folk of "Good to My Girls" and "God Is Waiting." The spacious "I Am a Youth Inclined to Ramble” recalls British folk while
Oldham delivers a quakingly passionate vocal performance aided only by occasional harmonies and
Sweeney's perfectly mixed barrage of layered acoustic and overdriven guitars. The jazz-tinged Americana of "My Body Is My Own" is among the more immediately vulnerable songs in
Oldham's sprawling catalog, pairing delicate, reverb-glazed guitar voicings with plainspoken lyrics of autonomy and reincarnation. The few songs where
Oldham and
Sweeney strike up the band -- guest shredding and revved-up rhythms by Tuareg guitarist
Mdou Moctar and his band on "Hall of Death" or the tense brooding of album closer "Not Fooling" -- are lively fun, but much like Superwolf many years before it, Superwolves is at its most powerful in its calmest, most clearly articulated moments. ~ Fred Thomas