Drag City Us レコード& CD

Review: Bonnie "Prince" Billy (Will Oldham) is a folk artist of towering stature, so the news of a new album in 2023 was nothing if not a "stop what you're doing" moment. Now coming to full-length LP format for the first time, after an initial CD and digital release, Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You hears Billy revive the spirit of folk music's roots in community and place, conjuring the wise memories of his past and fusing them with the anxieties of his present day. An all-acoustic, all-emotive album, Oldham makes constant reference to his family and people, getting at the real impossibility of divorcing oneself from community, despite the myths to the contrary peddled by merchants of the American dream.

Review: Quiet introspection and a fascinating view of 'ordinary life' characterise the latest solo record from singer-songwriter Bill Callahan. Many of his lyrics are observations of the mundane, but elevated by his wordplay and the dreamy, lullaby like quality of the guitar strumming around them. Nothing along the way here is ever forced, it unfolds with a sense of realism that is compelling throughout, and though much of it is masculine in subject, there is a feminine side to the emotion that make it widely accessible. Folky music this warm, heartfelt and filled with simple gratitude is a stable for this label, but few do it as well as Bill.

Review: Singer-songwriting wrapped up in the dusty acid wash denim of Americana doesn't really get more authentic than what Bill Callahan of Silver Spring, Maryland, can deliver. His latest LP, a mass saunter through 20 tracks of smokey spoken word and lightly sung lyrics, falls upon a picturesque bevvy of humble and acoustic instrumentation. Callahan's songs croon with romance, metaphor, and folky yarns that find their place among fingerpicked guitars and light melodies that enjoy a contrast with the darker musings of Callahan's own world of experience and storytelling. It presents the artist with his first studio in some five years, and a sound that is looser than a typical Bill Callahan missive but full of melodrama that centres around life and death. Our pick, Callahan's cover of the Carter Family's "Lonesome Valley".

Review: Bill Callahan is an adventuring sonic explorer who is happy to traverse a number of different worlds. He makes music that can be at times jarring and challenging and at others much more beautiful and soothing. He pairs off the magic of late night dreams with the harshness of the realities of life and all with plenty of musicianship and absorbing guitar skills. This album YTILAER follows others such as Gold Record, Shepherd In A SKeekskin Vest and Woke On A Whaleheart and brings all new influences to folk and Americana.

Review: It's October 2020 and two Bills decide to do a cover version of the 1967 Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) protest track 'Blackness of the Night'. A fitting choice given at the time the world was stuck in a strange recurring nightmare, defined by confusion, isolation, and pessimism, the track was not only appropriate, it was wonderfully re-read by the artists bringing it into the present day.

And they didn't stop there. Soon, there were more new versions of old greats coming from the pair, and the smart money was always on an album arriving at some point in the future. Well, that point is now, and finally we have it. Better yet, this is every bit as lovely as we could have hoped. Combining elements of pop, folk, blues, country, gospel, and rock, it's accomplished, sophisticated, and hugely enjoyable.

Review: John Fahey's complex legacy reaches from his groundbreaking work in the fields of acoustic guitar and folk music through to the wild abstraction of his later years. His contraction of a debilitating virus in the 80s threw his music in unexpected directions and as a result his final years of music found him heading into increasingly challenging territory. This collection of recordings from 1995-1996 were captured at a boarding house in Oregon where he lived for a time, and veer from a capella mantras to meandering guitar studies and other extremities in between. Compelling, illuminating sounds from an artist still being comprehended more than 20 years on from his passing.

Review: Ghost are sadly an easily confused band - doubly so, for the fact that there is now a wildly popular masked metal troupe of the same name, *and* because there is, uncannily, a 1984 film named Ghost, also rather well known. This confounding is apparently so prevalent that the obligatory Wikipedia entry on *this* Ghost is titled
'Ghost (1984 band)'. We wouldn't usually mention it, save for the fact that this perhaps not so wilful obscurantism actually works in their favour. With Drag City's reissue of Ghost's first album on griseous vinyl here, it's safe to say that this Japanese experimental psych/acid record's aura as a hidden gem feels rare to come by. It's almost as if Ghost (1984) is 'haunting' the other aforementioned cultural touchstones of the same name. Don't get it twisted, though: Ghost formed in the early 80s, but this debut recording didn't make it to the pressing plant until 1990. What explains the gap in their CV, you ask? Legend has it that the band led a truly nomadic existence - as a "band" should, in all senses of the word - roving, drifting from ruined ancient temples to disused subway stations near Tokyo. With that all checked, the album itself is truly free-spirited and eerie, and not what you'd expect from contemporary notions of space rock, with prepared tinkerings and strange readymade detritus seeming to fill each piece at every twist and turn.