When you’re Will Oldham aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy, you can pretty much do whatever the hell you want. And the man certainly exercises this hard won artistic freedom, confident that the faithful will follow. Oldham lets his poetic muse travel wherever it takes him, even if that means revisiting older material that’s… not really even all that old.

That’s what happens on his latest long player, Singer’s Grave - A Sea of Tongues, Oldham’s 11th under his Bonnie “Prince” Billy moniker, where all but two of the songs are reworked versions of numbers from 2011’s Wolfroy Goes to Town along with additional material that originally saw the light of day on the “Time to be Clear” single. This time around, for the most part, Oldham is backed by a proper band with pedal steel, fiddles, banjos—including Chris Scruggs, grandson of Earl on mandolin and ukulele and the gospel singing McCrary Sisters—and the sparse songs of Wolfroy are reworked and given more upbeat arrangements, comparatively speaking.
 

 
For “Blindlessness,” the desolate middle-of-the-night solemnity of the ghostly narration (reminding me, for whatever reason, of an eerie Appalachian take on Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, a comparison I suspect would please Oldham) is greatly enhanced by the ethereal overdubbing of Oldham’s voice. It takes two listens for this song to truly sink in. I liked it the first time I heard it, the second time, it blew me away. “Blindlessness” is the b-side of the “Mindlessness” 7” single, available January 27, 2015 on Drag City Inc. & Palace Records (iTunes). Video directed by Kyle Armstrong.