Will Oldham is one of the better-regarded songwriters of his generation, but in recent years he's taken up a sideline as an interpretive vocalist. As Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Oldham recorded an album of songs associated with the Everly Brothers, What the Brothers Sang, with Dawn McCarthy in 2013, and on 2017's Best Troubador, he covered 15 numbers from the Merle Haggard songbook. For 2018's Wolf of the Cosmos, Oldham has chosen not to cover a handful of songs, but an entire album: here, he interprets all 12 songs from Susanna's 2007 release Sonata Mix Dwarf Cosmos, in their original sequence. It's anyone's guess what prompted Oldham to offer his own take on someone else's album in toto, but Wolf of the Cosmos manages to pay homage to Susanna Wallumrød's vision while making room for Oldham's very distinct musical outlook. The original performances on Sonata Mix Dwarf Cosmos were deliberately spare, often suggesting the presence of only one or two instruments accompanying Susanna's vocals, and while there's more varied instrumentation here, the arrangements are whisper quiet, with the clink of Chris Rodahaffer's banjo and the sigh of Cheyenne Mize's violin sounding almost spectral next to the thoughtful murmur of Oldham's vocals. Oldham may not have written these tunes, but they fit him beautifully. Wallumrød's wordplay feels perfectly natural filtered through Oldham's instrument, and his vocals find him at the top of his game, delivering performances that are at once introspective and deeply felt, finding a wealth of emotion in the simplicity of his approach. Oldham's willfully cryptic manner has largely been set aside on these sessions, and there's a sincerity in this work that he doesn't always allow himself when tackling his own songs (though the lyric sheet translates the songs into Korean, just in case you feared he'd abandoned all his eccentricities). Wolf of the Cosmos may call into question the status of Will Oldham as a songwriter, but it shows that as a performer, Bonnie "Prince" Billy is doing some of the finest work of his career.
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