Most of this week I have been listening to the new EP Ask Forgiveness by Bonnie Prince Billy, just repeating it over and over. It features 7 covers and one new original.
The best tracks are the Danzig cover "Am I Demon", and the Phil Ochs cover "My Life". Yeah, there's an R. Kelly c
over on there too, of "The World's Greatest", and it's funny and semi ironic and all, but I like other stuff on the cd much better.
Bonnie Prince Billy is always both covering and writing songs about identity and struggling with that whole thing! Previous tracks "Little Boy Blue" and "Wolf Among Wolves" both are about those kind of issues. Anyway, the Danzig track is slow and pretty and asks "Am I Demon?/I need to know". We all get the somewhat resigned answer by the end of the song. I love when BPB ends the phrases by singing waaay up high. It's lovely. It's fun to hear a song about demons that's all folky and acoustic and not
screamed!
I'm a fan of Phil Ochs (See the name of my blog!), and it's great to hear someone like BPB covering him since he was such a talent and so brilliant and cutting. His lyrics are better than about 90% of everyone else's, give or take a few percentage points, of course. Anyway, "My Life" is a beautiful choice, and I guess it's yet another song about identity, about what life means and changes and paranoia and growing up. I guess it covers a lot of ground! It's really a poem:
The best tracks are the Danzig cover "Am I Demon", and the Phil Ochs cover "My Life". Yeah, there's an R. Kelly c
over on there too, of "The World's Greatest", and it's funny and semi ironic and all, but I like other stuff on the cd much better. Bonnie Prince Billy is always both covering and writing songs about identity and struggling with that whole thing! Previous tracks "Little Boy Blue" and "Wolf Among Wolves" both are about those kind of issues. Anyway, the Danzig track is slow and pretty and asks "Am I Demon?/I need to know". We all get the somewhat resigned answer by the end of the song. I love when BPB ends the phrases by singing waaay up high. It's lovely. It's fun to hear a song about demons that's all folky and acoustic and not
screamed! I'm a fan of Phil Ochs (See the name of my blog!), and it's great to hear someone like BPB covering him since he was such a talent and so brilliant and cutting. His lyrics are better than about 90% of everyone else's, give or take a few percentage points, of course. Anyway, "My Life" is a beautiful choice, and I guess it's yet another song about identity, about what life means and changes and paranoia and growing up. I guess it covers a lot of ground! It's really a poem: