Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy

Best Troubadour DOMINO. CD/DL/LP

Underground, overground: salute to country icon from inscrutable Kentuckian. In a 2009 interview in the New Yorker, Will Oldham recalled an old profile of Merle Haggard in the same magazine, the star pictured spread-eagled clad in only a checked shirt and ski boots: Òthat’s, like, an ideal for me,Ó said Oldham, who played the country hero’s It’s Not Love (But It’s Not Bad) at his debut gig. Haggard died in 2016, and this is Oldham’s formal tribute, a home-recorded collection of covers that roams joyfully (but not too joyfully) through six decades of songs. Carefully mapping the co-ordinates of his obsession, Oldham charts maudlin sentiment on Roses In The Winter, stoic fatalism on I’m Always On A Mountain When I Fall, and hard-won wisdom on a beautifully lo-fi If I Could Only Fly. If, as Oldham believes, Haggard was a ÒchannellerÓof the old ways, Best Troubadour is a tremendous way to keep the lines open.