"We Love Our Hole"- Bonnie "Prince" Billy & the Cairo Gang

(From Stereogum)

Under the nom de plume Bonnie "Prince" Billy, indie-folk legend Will Oldham has proven he loves nature. Not in any "flowers in your hair," Mother Earth sense, but in the most simple way possible. Oldham's content to lean up against a mighty oak and let the Sun crackle on his face. He'd rather stare up in naked wonder at the hawks in the sky than face his troubles on the ground. He's compared himself to "a duck" and has declared "My Home is the Sea". Even on the despondent "Nomadic Revery (All Around)" from 1999's defining I See A Darkness, Oldham found time to lie down on the ground and gaze upwards.

Considering his unadorned appreciation of nature and his own filmic career, it's a small surprise he hasn't recorded a track for a surf movie before. Granted surf films aren't quite a dime a dozen, but still you would've thought by now some music supervisor would've heard a slow cresting Bonnie "Prince" Billy song and fast tracked it to a director. Spirit of Akasha, a new documentary about the 1971 Australian surf-classic Morning of the Earth, has provided Oldham with that opportunity. And joined by former collaborator Emmett Kelly (of the Cairo Gang), he's seized the chance. "We Love Our Hole" has every hallmark of a Bonnie "Prince" Billy work. From the tender double-tracked vocals to the taciturn guitar riff, everything is something you've heard before. But that's precisely why the effort succeeds. Billy and Kelly aren't chasing a new idea to the ends of the Earth. They'll wait until the wave comes to them and ride it into the sunset.





Backed with "I'll Be Alright", the "We Love Our Hole" single is out through Empty Cellar on June 17.