will oldham [music]

will oldham is about as indie-huge as you can get. as it happens, the latest bonnie 'prince' billy album, beware, just dropped, and, accordingly, there is a glut of oldham lore in the news. loads of links below, all from the past week give or take. all are worth a look, but if you've only got a moment or just want to cut to the counter-intuitive chase, i recommend the independent article. i usually stay away from 'what's on your ipod' junk, but as you might expect, oldham's ipod is not quite like yours or mine, nor is his annotation. a sampling:

The Pipil Indians of El Salvador

"This next song is called 'El Barrenar'. The Smithsonian library has a website and you can order anything from the archives. Someone will then burn you a CD. I was going to El Salvador a year ago and I wanted to hear some music in the months leading up to my trip there. This is vocal, rustic and is in Spanish, when I was hoping it would be in an American-Indian dialect. It's probably from some time in the 1960s. The truth is I'm not all that happy with this purchase."

...

Timbaland

"We now come to 'Boardmeeting', one word, by Timbaland featuring Magoo from his 2007 record Shock Value. I have never listened to this song. I was on tour and I watched a Timbaland video with Nelly Furtado late one night on the hotel TV. I liked it and thought, OK, I must listen to the rest of the record. But I don't like the rest of the record, though I should at this point confess a weakness for Nelly Furtado records in general."

LINK: npr reviews beware
LINK: bonnie 'prince' billy live on soundcheck on wnyc (audio)
LINK: "the brilliant disguises of will oldham" - village voice
LINK: beware review on nytimes popcast (audio)
LINK: "will oldham lets his ipod do the talking" - the independent
DOWNLOAD // VIDEO: bonnie 'prince' billy - i am goodbye (via)