A Week With Bonnie Prince Billy's "Lie Down In The Light": Day 3
10 October 2008
tell your friends...
Words by Joel Minor // Illustration by Sonia Kreitzer
One need only to look at the cover and the liner notes to be reminded that Bonny Billy’s albums often have significant contributions from family members. The cover art, like that of I See a Darkness, is by his mother Joanne Oldham, who also provided liner and back-cover drawings for other albums. His brothers Paul and Ned, of course, have been playing/singing/recording for Bonny from the Palace beginnings, and Paul continues here. His father Joe provided quite a few liner photographs in the past, and The Letting Go had one by his nephew, Sam.
One also need look no further than the title and cover of Lie Down in the Light for the conflicts contained on the album. The scene of an epic wrestling match—reminiscent of Jacob grappling with a stranger who turns out to be an angel or even Yahweh himself—belies the passive, inviting message of the title. Who knows what that stranger-angel meant to accomplish by wrestling Jacob, who was on his way home to finally reconcile with his brother but afraid that same brother was preparing to attack him with an army.
Story goes, it was night and Jacob was alone when the match began, which lasted until close to morning before the stranger realized he could not beat him and asked to be let go from Jacob’s hold. Jacob would not do so until the stranger blessed him, so he must have recognized the divine composite of this foe he held down, but how remarkable to not accept surrender until your defeated opponent blesses you! The stranger blesses him by renaming him Israel—one who has struggled with God—but refuses to reveal his own name to Jacob. The brief passage is very ambiguous about who or what this man actually was, but Jacob assumes he had gone toe-to-toe with God. That morning his brother not only does not attack him, but enthusiastically welcomes him home.
The cover drawing is also ambivalent, somewhat crude, and for the first time on a Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy album, the lettering is different—again, somewhat sloppily hand drawn in large, upper-case, block letters. The coloring is bright, with the angel figure in a headlock being green and his wings psychedelic, and the other wrestler orange, his shorts purple. The whole effect conjures up adolescence, a creative rendering of superheroes or a Biblical scene for art class.
“When there’s only one thing I can do, well you know I don’t want to do it. When there’s just one way to get through, sometimes I don’t want to go through with it.” So opens the album, with insubordinate sentiment over easy-doing rhythm. Bonny Billy has often sang of the child, either present or absent, but here he takes on the stubborn perspective of the child himself, resisting the rules, as all good adolescents-at-heart do, in the name of discovering their own ways. Experience, though, has taught the man, that he can not and should not resist being measured by the number of dear ones he maintains.
So, even as the rover continues to wander, to follow his own paths again, he keeps tally of his worth to others. Dirt, wrong, sin, keep him balanced. He hums and sings this song like he’s the most blessed person alive, anchored by familial love yet unfettered from either blind devotion to or blind deviance from their way ahead, their day that awaits. Like the mantra of a recovering alcoholic, “Easy Does It” allows the flow but is not passive toward the clashes. Instead it celebrates the confession, and in all that, sets the stage for the eleven warbling divulgences to follow.
True, he doesn’t warble like he used to, but his voice shines on “Easy Does It” and throughout Lie Down, and often hearkens back to his days leading Palace, emoting in the higher octaves. The playing on this song especially, with its everybody-take-a-turn, and the harmonizing, with its everybody-join-in, reminds me most of Ease Down the Road. Home-spun, out for fun, but humble and reverent along the path, hugging and punching the whole way.
It’s tough to choose a bind-with song for this one, so many has he sung of the joy and dread of going it alone, sharing dawn with anyone willing yet also not claiming false completeness of himself. But the big ol’ bear beats them out, the cinematographer walking away from what’s good, what’s shown, what he leaned on, what he lived for, but he can’t walk away from little ol’ Louisville, he reminds himself, not ever truly alone from his home.
As I mentioned earlier, the ruminative nature of Lie Down is evident throughout, and it kicks off “Glory Goes” with the first lines, with that glory going to those too caught up in “the rhythm of the song that does not end” to be seeking any kind of glory. The song is an ode to the rambling, performer’s life that he leads, though not to the clichéd rock-n-roll decadence so often egotistically celebrated, giving off shallow, simplistic notions of music’s allure. It’s a song of a man who still believes in his trade, even if he has to work through the night, and his co-workers are among the wicked, and his boss is a muse who is not always enraptured by him as he is her.
That elusive “you” emerges in the chorus, energizing the singer’s inner wires, giving the song a familiar duality, with the verses the first-person story. Unlike in “Puzzle,” he is not singing to the song itself, but rather to someone who rouses the memory of it and renews his vocational vigor. One could also read the chorus as actually coming from the listener, who by being inspired by the singer, inspires the singer to continue singing of what inspires him.
“You do not have to be ignorant / for me to get on with you. / Rather you do / if anything is to shine through.” “Life is a tribute to you / and so is dying … I am drinking again and I toast you / Who will never know what it is that I do.” Ten or so years ago as Bonny Billy was going through moniker changes, he sang of another, who rouses him from a distance, and who keeps that distance. This other was there from the beginning, i.e., “Is it time for you to settle down / yet your tiredness and sadness keep my spirits up,” but in my estimation it peaked at Joya, an album with just as many hugs and punches toward a brother, as Ease Down the Road had toward a lover.
Perhaps it’s a way of dealing with fame and of communicating with fans, through this all-consuming craft, which he could not attain without the dedicated listener, but which he could not maintain with swells of people thoughtlessly adulating him. He is consumed by the song, after all, he is the song, and the song is everything else. For any of this to reach another, to enlighten another, takes a distance, an ignorance and independence of him personally.
“Glory Goes” goes with either “For the Mekons,” “I Am Drinking Again” or “Under What Was Oppression” for a perfect, potent drink with friends just before dawn. The first mix is called The Deputy, the second Angel Hooks, and the last, Making My Living, for my money the choicest, the closest match of the bunch, Bonny Billy making his living before you wake up, reveling on regardless if she chooses to ignore him.
It’s good to have “Glory Goes,” to be reminded of how good the friends are, how good it is to go into oneself, to live goal-lessly and to follow surprises and smiles all the while, “you” being anything or anybody able to bring them to you. The song’s long fade-out—so rare if not unique to a Bonny Billy song—sends the unknown, uncondoned actions dancing along into eternity, not of an after-life but of life ever renewing, holy and deeply, through countless families down the line.
commenting closed for this article
Recent Progressive Reviews
all content © 2006-2008, daytrotter®, all rights reserved. | Free MP3s for your iPod. | Contact Us | p3p privacy policy | For information about Advertising, send a message to: advertising@daytrotter.com
All songs posted at Daytrotter.com are the exclusive property of the respective recording artists and Daytrotter. Please do not post these songs on other websites/weblogs, etc. We encourage you to link directly to our songs page or the specific free songs page for a particular band/artist.
Daytrotter is a registered trademark of Daytrotter Media, LLC.
