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Thirty years ago this month (August 21, 1995), Will Oldham released his third full-length album, Viva Last Blues, under the moniker Palace Music. The album stood as a definitive bridge between the intimate, lo-fi aesthetic of Oldham’s early “Palace” work and the more expansive, often darker sonic universe he would later explore as Bonnie “Prince” Billy. Like the latter, his stage names, such as Palace Brothers, Palace Songs, Palace Music, allowed Oldham a certain artistic freedom; he later admitted that the Bonnie “Prince” Billy persona was created to “take care of the performing,” allowing him, the person, to remain out of the spotlight.
Viva Last Blues represented a significant artistic departure from his preceding albums, taking his music in a new direction, which demanded a new form of expression. Tracks like the swampy opening More Brother Rides and the folk-rock wall of sound of Work Hard / Play Hard stood out for the way the album defied a conventional album flow, creating a series of dramatic shifts that mirrored the emotional heft of the songs.
To capture this new sound, Oldham assembled a “crack crew of players,” including his brother Ned Oldham on bass and Jason Loewenstein of Sebadoh on drums.
The album’s unique sound is inextricably linked to the recording engineer, the late Steve Albini. Albini famously detested the term “producer,” preferring to be known as a “recording engineer”, seeing his role as a “conduit” for the band’s vision, rather than an imposer of his own. His core philosophy was to capture the raw, live sound of a band with minimal interference. This live feel was accentuated by Oldham’s often fragile, honest vocals and some off-kilter, quirky musical moments that became the very essence of the album’s charm.
For the album closer, Old Jerusalem, Oldham opts for just solo strummed guitar accompaniment, while a swift departure from the full-band sound of Work Hard, it’s the perfect closer. For the accompanying Aaron Wool-Directed video, Oldham was joined by Chloë Sevigny, and it also features Pat Woolf and Giles Constable.
Thirty years later, the legacy of Viva Last Blues is deeply entrenched in the history of alternative music. Oldham’s naked honesty was rare in the mid-1990s. Alongside contemporaries like Bill Callahan and David Berman, Oldham proved that a do-it-yourself punk aesthetic could be married with American folk traditions to create something new and profound. It paved the way for Oldham’s future masterworks and continues to inspire new generations of artists. The album’s lasting impact is not about its specific sound but about its radical artistic ethos: a record doesn’t need to be pristine to be a timeless masterpiece.
The album is still available to buy new on Vinyl/CD from good independent stores.
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‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source klofmag.com ’
