The extraordinary Bonnie 'Prince' Billy is back. With a quite extraordinary album. I Made a Place was mooted for release in December but for some reason has only just appeared. Or at least to me. It's a record quite out of time. Billy has form for this of course, a fierce determination to do his own thing and stay in his own place regardless of the way prevailing winds are blowing. He's certainly done just that here.
For this record sounds utterly authentically like a Roots Country album made in America between 1968 and 1971. By artists such as Dillard & Clark, Gram Parsons, Neil Young or Michael Nesmith. There's a real beauty in having an artist who can bring forth a record that inhabits the sensibility and pure idealism of these times. For let's face it, we live in much more cynical times now.
Of course the hippies, (and this is very much a 'hippie' record), had Nixon and Vietnam to contend with, but their response was to immerse themselves in universal verities. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy makes his way down a similar forest path. It's difficult to imagine a record coming out this year that immerses the listener so utterly in the Great American Outback.
Thirteen tracks in all and not a single dud to break the mood. One of my favourite records of the year so far. An utterly immediate and heartfelt album. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy knocks the ball quite out of the park with I Made a Place.
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