Beware

Oldham remains mostly untroubled on Beware, accompanied by an array of instruments--marimba, cornet, banjo, and flute swirl around placid country-tinged ruminations.

Beware is supremely sequenced, and is possibly Oldham's finest album yet.

The mood is undeniably American, and Bonnie (or Oldham) seems incomprehensibly at peace with his hallmark solitude. [Winter 2009, p.91]

If the man’s curious oeuvre hasn’t already provided reason enough to pay attention, it’s doubtful Beware will convert anyone to the fold. But for those already attuned to Oldham’s songcraft, Beware is a rich and fulfilling work from a man who seems to have a paranormal grasp on human nature, with all the sensuality, God-fearing, tummy-rubbing and head-scratching that implies.

The record rarely seems overcrowded; it confidently puts everyone to selective use. “Beware,” generally excellent if occasionally meandering, has an outer color and an inner truth; it’s never what it seems.

Beware is a body record,, a playful and intimate piece that lyrically and melodically invites you in, where his remote personae have occasionally served to push one away. [Apr 2009, p.80]

Beware emulates and elaborates on the familiar, and Oldham's strengths as a songwriter and bandleader shape the album into something beautiful.

The new Bonnie Billy record, Beware, is fuller in every sense of the word, from the choir of background singers answering Oldham on the opening track ('Beware Your Only Friend') to the way Oldham stops that song cold for a muted interlude.

With the help of an expert new backing band, Oldham wrings a polished grace out of this material, from ballads ('I Don't Belong to Anyone') to smoldering anthems ('Afraid Ain't Me').

His songs float along like dust in the afternoon sun, less driven to move forward than just to be.

Oldham continues to reinvent his landscape as a relevant artist with each attempt, and Beware tests his ability to weave different instruments into the fabric of an Americana record without breaking the mold entirely.

Beware is a 40-odd minute work that ebbs, flows and carries you along perfectly.

Beware may be the best country-rock album David Allan Coe never got around to making himself.

This is pure non-homogenised, heart-on-sleeve, downright meaningful music, the sort of thing The Wombats cry themselves to sleep over on a nightly basis. For that alone it’s worth a tenner of anybody’s money.

Beware is exactly the album to be expected from Oldham, now, as he begins to investigate the limelight, as he trots out his friendships with gothic southern troubadours (Jim White), say, or free jazz northerners (Rob Mazurek and Nicole Mitchell), wondering whether to scamper back to the stern nobody-ness Drag City allows him or push on expanding his solipsistic world.

This clash of the sincere and the facetious that makes Beware such a disconcerting album.

Some will long for Oldham’s minimalist era, but Beware is still an engaging record from one of the indie world’s best songwriters.

Oldham's brand of folk music is certainly old enough and weird enough, but there are noticeably fewer moments of beauty and fewer lyrical revelations than on his best material.

The resultant songs have a familiarity that aims them toward the back of your brain but an internal energy that prods them into prominence with repeated listens.

Dark things stir beneath the surface as alt.country figurehead Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy releases umpteenth solo record.

It is simply beautiful. [May 2009, p.96]