Bonnie “Prince” Billy

In one incarnation or another, for the past 15 years, singer-songwriter Will Oldham has made records on his own terms. After a peripatetic period he returned to his native Louisville, Ky., making a conscious decision to live far from the major metropolitan centers so he could manage, by his own estimation, to make a decent living. Building on last year's Lie Down in the Light, Oldham’s latest album as Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Beware marks another outlaw-countrified chapter of the songwriter’s existence, stratified with brass, pedal steel and banjo, and a prominent vocal chorus.