It’s one thing for an artist to still pulse strong after their 20th or 30th record. It’s another for them to continuously, reliably capture lightning in a bottle time and again, not to mention surprise listeners with the depth of an unexplored feeling or underexplored conceit. So it goes with Will Oldham, the Kentucky-bred Renaissance man who released We Are Together Again, Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s 31st LP, on 6 March via longtime proprietor Drag City Records.
Continuity has long played a role in Oldham’s joys. He invites us to follow him closely, considering and re-considering themes and ideas from record to record. It’s not so much that things evolve dramatically among his myriad projects, though they can and sometimes do. It’s more that devotees can find themselves embroiled in ongoing conversations with Oldham, watching as the Cash-covered singer-songwriter works through the trappings of marriage and family, leans into his humanity or faith, tugs at his demons or, y’know, lets loose a barbaric yawp.
In this respect, the words, melodies and timbre Bonnie “Prince” Billy shares on We Are Together Again trace their lineage back to his 2019 LP I Made a Place and its faux-successor, 2023’s Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You. It’s not so much a trilogy, though, as a series of texts written in the same language, and its dialect is rooted along the familiar banks of the Ohio River. Togetherness, as plain-spoken as the record’s title suggests, is key both in content and structure. It’s repeatedly evident how and why Oldham, fresh off the Nashville-isms of last year’s The Purple Bird, captured his new ten-song LP right in his fabled Louisville.
Community and collaboration are seeded deep in the soil of these songs. You can hear it when backing vocalist Maggie Halfman’s smoky harmonies devastate listeners on “Strange Trouble” as much as Oldham’s weather-worn lament.
Or take the cripplingly beautiful “Life Is Scary (Horses)”, a “spiritual cover” (per Oldham) of the Sally Timms/Jon Langford song “Horses” featuring, yes, Timms herself, but also Thomas Deakin’s careful whispers, and heart-wrenching but also somehow restrained strings arranged by Ryder McNair, Oldham’s cousin. The song is fleshy and tangible without being excessive or gaudy, cinematic but far from overwrought. (For those taking notes, Ned Oldham returns to play bass herein; his first appearance on one of his brother’s records in two decades.)
Listeners bred on Palace earthiness may gravitate to certain tunes; “(Everybody’s Got) A Friend Named Joe”, which falls halfway through the record’s voluptuous 47-minute run-time, will surprise listeners who initially shrug off the material as too optimistic or too playful. It unfurls a beauty that’s palpable and oddly familiar, a descendant, perhaps, of Oldham’s brute choir. Oldham, as he’s wont to do, is rarely “solo” on We Are Together Again, though it’s always evident who’s steering the ship.
Parts of “Vietnam Sunshine” have an alarming intimacy to them, the feeling that you’re sitting on a porch next to Oldham as your old friend starts strumming away, struck with a bolt of sudden inspiration. However, Oldham’s signature acoustic guitar is indeed low in the mix, below the shimmering saxophone notes of tourmate Jacob Duncan. The excellent swaying sing-song of “Hey Little”, another surprise, comes as much from Oldham’s mellifluous voice as McNair’s strings. Oldham shows an amazing command of the silence between notes on “Davey Dead”, but the song is incomplete without the careful (and unexpected) work of a harpist.
Then, there’s the timeliness of the new record. We Are Together Again is deeply “of the moment”. On The Purple Bird, released in the early months of President Trump’s second term, Oldham occasionally tilted political – even if opaquely. “Right is right, wrong is wrong / No matter what side you’re standing on / Can’t we all just get along?” he sang at one point. Elsewhere, he planted, then twisted, the blade: “Tempted by the lure of a liar / Who preys upon the foolish and the weak / If we rely on love to lift us higher / Things’ll be all right for you and me.”
So, why would listeners ingest the questions propelling forward “Why Is the Lion?” without transposing them onto a nation-gone-MAGA? Prone to dismissing the idea? Consider: “Why does the lion still tear at our legs? / How can she still have such hunger? / She’s fed on our hearts and our tongues yet still begs / Through the night, terrorizing our slumber.”
Many Americans have countered 2026’s singular brand of social anxiety with spasms of rage. More than one million people follow fury-fueled comedian Lewis Black on Facebook. Acid keeps pouring out of the corners of Tucker Carlson’s smirk, but Oldham doesn’t yield, instead responding with a nuance the era utterly lacks. Again, contrary to conventional wisdom, he doesn’t beat the horse dead. (The aforementioned “Friend Named Joe”, for example, is no homage to Biden.)
We Are Together Again, strengthened by communal tendencies, meets bombs in Iran and executions in Minneapolis not with clenched fists of protest, but with hugs. LP #31 closes, appropriately book-ended, with the lion, but there is no tempest, no rage. Instead, Bonnie “Prince” Billy embraces intimacy: “To rise from the ring and hear someone sing / Is it my voice, or, better yet, ours?” he sings. “I love you, I love you forever tonight / And I will love you forever, you’ll learn.”
“I Send My Love to You,” indeed.