Back in April, we reviewed Matt Sweeney and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy‘s hugely anticipated new album Superwolves. It still is one of our 2021 highlights and is sure to be in the end of year “Best of”. David Weir’s album review wasn’t short on quotes to lift from to demonstrate some of that magic and mystique.
“…the following thirteen tracks feed further into their mystique, proving slippery to categorize even by their standards.”
“…As ever with Oldham, often there’s no telling wisecrack and divine wisdom apart.”
and for the finale…
“Last year Dylan sang, “I contain multitudes” quoting Whitman, a sentiment this sophomore tour de force boldly epitomizes. Equal parts glamorous and grotesque, Superwolves is a sprawling, bewildering frenzy of ideas and emotions, leaving the listener with plenty to unpick. Of their long hit list of collaborations and co-conspirators, Matt Sweeney & Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy is surely the deadliest combo.”
Although the album was digitally released in April, I know there will be plenty, like me, who are hungering for that piece of vinyl to arrive. Drag City have announced that the physical, due to pandemic related delays, is now set for July 16th.
In the interlude, Superwolves’ California tour has now kicked off (with support from Meg Baird – man I’m so jealous of you ticket holders) but, for those of us who can’t be there, there is a new digital single to enjoy. The much loved Joan Shelley and Nathan Salsburg have teamed up with Matt and Bonny to present the “Watch What Happens” b/w “Stay On My Shore” digital single.
In their usual eloquent style Drag City add: On their rendition of Superwolves’ “Watch What Happens,” Joan and Nathan slip inside the skin of the tune, adapting the original’s noirish air into a thorny folk classicism and communicating the message of self-reliance with equal parts wonder and stoic, wind-strewn beauty, streaming like nature intended from their hands and mouths. For “Stay On My Shore,” Bonny and Matt unfurl one of Joan’s best-loved tunes. Trading each other’s essential nature, Face/Off-style; they tap raw beauty into music, two ways.
Will Oldham:
“There was a time when new songs got shared around, and when a new song was coming out it wasn’t strange for multiple recording artists to have a go at the song, and oftentimes a new composition would be recorded and released by multiple artists on multiple labels within its first year of public existence. All you have to do is listen to the first two episodes of the new season of Tyler Mahan Coe’s Cocaine and Rhinestones podcast to get a feel for this phenomenon. So we’re harkening back to more collaborative and competitive times, when songwriters and singers and publishers and producers knew what each other was up to, when we here release Joan Shelley and Nathan Salsburg’s take on our new ‘Watch What Happens.’ To be fair and fun, Sweeney and I got our hands really really dirty by thrusting them into the loam of Joanie’s ‘Stay on My Shore,’ which Matt turned from a frank admission of vulnerable love into something somewhat…creepier. I’ve sung ‘Stay on My Shore’ with Nathan and Joan many many times in the years since its recording six years ago, and I’m thrilled to sing on it every single time. Each time I sing on it, I try to wring out of it some of the weird hard complexities of my own understanding and appreciation of romantic need; it’s chock full of power and potential to be so dissected and revisited. Matt made it modal and dirgy, as scary as anything Siouxie Sioux or Baby Dee have ever intoned…maybe. The past year-and-a-half has made many of us workers-in-song reach out over distance to reassure and inspire each other, and here we have joyfully volleyed our musical ideas forth and back, as friends and siblings in the cause.”
and Joan Shelley & Nathan Salsburg:
“Being asked to cover someone’s song is like being invited to rearrange someone’s room. Already admiring the Superwolves’ furnishings and spatial sense, we found plenty of fun and satisfaction just messing with their stuff, rifling through their drawers, sitting in their chairs, jumping on their bed, and watching what happens.”
Grab the single here: https://ffm.to/watchwhathappens