Will Oldham is once again at his best, delivering an album that elevates his country-folk with choral textures drawn from Leonard Cohen.
Pourquoi We Are Together Again plutôt que n’importe quel autre disque de Bonnie “Prince” Billy depuis une quinzaine d’années ? Qu’est-ce qui différencie ce nouvel album de l’ex-Palace Brothers au point d’en faire son œuvre la plus enthousiasmante depuis au moins Lie Down in the Light (2008), synthèse de ses multiples facettes ?
Is it that drawing from the inexhaustible wells of country on his previous release, The Purple Bird (2025), brings him here back to the inspiration of The Letting Go (2006)? Will we finally stop overthinking and simply enjoy the music? And what music!
A Perfect Demonstration of Oldham’s Talent
The ten songs that comprise this new phase of his extensive discography (more than twenty releases under the Bonnie “Prince” Billy alias since I See a Darkness in 1999) constitute the most perfect demonstration of Oldham’s talent.
Announced by They Keep Trying to Find You — a gem that should constitute the exact ideal for craftsmen like Herman Dune — and opened by Why Is the Lion? (another question), We Are Together Again was once again recorded in Louisville, closer than ever to the Ohio River, proudly notes the songwriter.
Like his Scottish counterpart James Yorkston, Will Oldham possesses a modest yet generous luxuriance. Never here do meticulous arrangements overshadow the songs and their intimate, inhabited performances. Of sovereign gentleness yet threaded with immense anxieties, the album also conveys that contagious warmth of making music together that Big Thief recently celebrated on Double Infinity (2025).
Humble Showpieces of Bravery
The sublime Life Is Scary Horses, with its rising breeze of strings, sweeps through several seasons in under five minutes and opens the heart of the album, made up of humble showpieces of bravery (Everybody’s Got a Friend Named Joe, Vietnam Sunshine and Hey Little).
With its Cohen-like harmonies and arrangements that could sound as a soundtrack to A True Story (David Lynch, 1999), the album at times tilts country on its side, straddling the fruitful ease of the Basement Tapes (Bob Dylan, 1975) and the sun-drenched warmth of Calexico at their best.
Right up to the discreet electric forays at the end that loop back (the reprise of the opening track): the lion returns, as we celebrate the Prince’s return to the peak of his form. One last question on the road: might this be the finest album of the first quarter of 2026?
We Are Together Again (Domino/Sony Music). Release on March 6.
