Bonnie “Prince” Billy gaven They Keep Trying to Find You a striking airing on the BBC’s Later… with Jools Holland, and you can watch the performance below.
The song was the lead single from We Are Together Again, which was released on March 6th via Domino (UK/EU) and No Quarter (US), recorded at End of an Ear Studios in Louisville with Jim Marlowe engineering and co-producing.
They Keep Trying to Find You is one of the album’s darker corners. Its narrator shuts the world out — throwing away an unread letter, leaving the phone ringing, painting over the windows to hide the moon — retreating until they become “one with the darkness within.” On the Holland stage, that interior dread comes through plainly on a darkened stage with just Will Oldham with his guitar in the spotlight.
In our review of We Are Together Again, Thomas Blake placed the song at the album’s political heart:
“There is also a political element: They Keep Trying to Find You is about the pros and cons – mostly the cons – of burying your head in the sand in the face of increasing external pressures, some of which may stem from the state of the world. Oldham pits the darkness within against the darkness without and comes to the conclusion that you can’t fight the former without facing up to the latter.”