Bonnie Prince Billy: 'Beware'
Beware any American tourist who tries to pass himself off as Scottish Royalty; he’s probably been on the whisky too long. The voice of Bonnie Prince Billy would certainly attest to such, caked in the sound of a thousand empty liquor bottles and needing a backing chorus to keep it sweet.
One can well imagine the track titles to Beware being thought up by someone clasping said whisky bottle. ‘Death Final’, ‘I Don’t Belong To Anyone' and ‘You Can’t Hurt Me Now’ don’t exactly imbue happiness or joy. They appear to be more a reflection of a faded life.
Overall the sound is similar to BPB’s 2003 effort The Letting Go; Strummed and plucked guitars, strings, and drums complementing a voice that at times makes you reach for the volume control - to turn it up. The softness of Billy’s vocals and the accompanying delicate cellos and harps do occasionally manage to cast away the dark lyrical clouds which tell of lost loves, friends no more and the haunting spectre of death. However the album’s overarching theme remains one of moroseness.
Despite the title, ‘You Don’t Love Me’ is one of the more upbeat tracks on the album. It starts with the promise of a bouncing fiddle, and we get an appreciative hand clap or two from the crowd at the bar before the ear is drawn back to the scratchy fiddle and omnipresent drum beat that pervade the whole track.
There is a burst of brass on almost every song, especially on the reflectional ‘You Can’t Hurt Me Now’ where it is the overriding sound. Occasionally there is the seemingly apologetic tinkle of a whistle or a snatched phrase from a fiddle, but they fade quickly leaving no echo on the bar-room boards. That is the sum of this album, little snatches of this and glimpses of that, it promises so much more but doesn’t quite deliver.
In the face of Billy’s assurances that ‘There Is Something I Have To Say’, it is unfortunate that this album doesn’t say very much at all. If you liked the Prince’s other albums then there is nothing on Beware that will dissuade you from listening. However if you’ve not heard him before then there is not much on the album to make you sit up and take note, let alone seek out his last 10 years of work.
Words: Patrick Dennehy
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