Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Matt Sweeney are ‘Superwolves’

by

Superwolves, the latest album from long-time collaborators Bonnie “Prince” Billy (Will Oldham) and Matt Sweeney, sounds like a homecoming for both the musicians and listeners alike. A follow-up to 2005’s excellent Superwolf, Superwolves recreates that album’s quiet intensity for a new era. Superwolves feels comfortable, but not in a way that suggests any sort of artistic complacency. It is an album that provides space to consider what really matters in life, a reality that makes the album well suited for the current moment.

While many of the songs on Superwolves predate the COVID-19 pandemic, it is difficult if not impossible to extricate some of the record’s best songs from this contemporary crisis. The pandemic has forced us to grapple intimately with mortality and death, two topics that Superwolves addresses with great emotional depth and nuance. More specifically, tracks such as “Resist the Urge,” “Hall of Death,” and “God is Waiting” capture the multifaceted nature of loss, and the grieving process that accompanies such loss.

For Oldham, this can lead to anger: in “God is Waiting” he bluntly notes that “God can fuck herself.” Yet Superwolves also reminds us of the healing power of memory. “I’m holding you and singing strong and constant in your ear,” Oldham sings on “Resist the Urge.” “I may not be there bodily, but in the wind, I’m here.”

Not all Gloom and Doom

Yet what makes such songs particularly powerful is their universality; while they may speak to our present, they are not tethered to a specific moment. Oldham describes his desire of “wanting to have a shared language” on this album, one that speaks to emotions we feel at all points during our lives. “The actual hope,” Oldham continues, “is that, as intense as these past few years have been, that last two years won’t be more impactful than any other two years of life. The point of the songs is to complement, or bolster, the lives of people we knew pre-pandemic.”

Thankfully, Superwolves is not all doom and gloom. In addition to featuring one of the most beautiful love songs of the past year—“My Blue Suit”—the album also includes “My Popsicle,” a song that wonderfully captures both the joy and terror of childhood. Such tracks highlight the uncertainty inherent in life, a point driven home in “There Must be a Someone.” Here, Oldham plaintively asks, “Must I live my whole life through/Now knowing what to do?” “It’s such a great line,” interjects Sweeney with a laugh. “And it’s something people will say until the day they die.”

Both Oldham and Sweeney are eager to play the songs on Superwolves for live audiences. For Sweeney, the past two years have driven home just how important playing music is to him. “For me,” he explains, “there was always something kind of silly, kind of absurd, about playing on stage. And that’s gone now.” That sense of freedom through performance is also present in Oldham. Shows now conjure up “unpredictable emotions. You feel like, ok, I’ve played a show before. And you stand up on a stage and it’s a totally new experience.” After the past two years, such a liberatory experience, if only transitory, sounds incredibly appealing – and, for many of us, incredibly needed.

Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Matt Sweeney play The Back Room at Colectivo on March 7.