Bonnie Prince Billy & the Cairo Gang w/ The Babblers

Neighborhood Theatre

Dec. 3, 2010

THE DEAL: Will Oldham’s latest incarnations play Charlotte.

THE GOOD: For nearly two decades, Will Oldham’s various personae have propagated like the horny fornicators in his salty songs. But the constants in Oldham’s unique musical vision remain: the warbling — yet increasingly assured — voice splintered by emotion and digging for light in darkness; earthy (in the Henry Miller sense) lyrics and Delphic pronouncements that make the profane sound sacred; and songs that stand tall next to the best classic country and folk rock. BPB’s two latest incarnations — Bonnie Prince Billy & the Cairo Gang, and the freshly baked mystery group, The Babblers — turned in two intriguing sets Friday night for a full-floor-plus Neighborhood Theatre audience, though the headlining Cairo Gang proved to be the more reliably enjoyable.

The 70-minute BPB & the Cairo Gang set leaned heavily on this year’s intimate and sparsely feral Wonder Show of the World, but reached back occasionally into the songwriter’s voluminous catalog for classics like Palace Music’s stunning “New Partner.”

The sextet featured gorgeous three-part harmony arrangements from Oldham, Angel Olsen and guitarist Emmett Kelly, as well as colorful keyboard accents from Ben Boye (particularly on harmonium), and just-right rhythms from double- bassist Danny Kiely and drummer Van Campbell. Kelly’s playing is a highlight of recent Oldham albums, as it was this night, too (his clean alto harmonies also serve as a superb foil for Oldham’s scruffily lusty vocals). But Kelly pulls it off by stealth, his tasteful jazz-flavored leads on “That’s What Our Love Is” and rich, twangy fills on “The Sounds Are Always Begging” just two of many moments whose power accumulated as the show went on.

Still, Oldham is the draw. Now nearing 40, the Louisville native has settled comfortably into his role as wandering iconoclast. He has the sort of peculiar tics-and-fits stage presence that, as one critic-wag recently noted, “exudes the air of a man usually only addressed by outreach workers.” On this night, with his walrus ‘stache, generous Civil War General-beard and enormous balding pate; his one-legged crane jigs, genuflections and crotch-grabs, Oldham comes off like a blend of possessed preacher, folk rapper and handicapped yoga instructor. But his aren’t the calculated spasms of a preening front-man.

Echoing the earnest young preacher he played as a 17-year-old in John Sayles’ 1987 Appalachia-based film Matewan, Oldham genuinely inhabits the music, his fervid gyrations a Pentecostal Dancing In the Spirit — only celebrating the hearty flavors of worldly domesticity instead, like a memorable coupling (sample lyric from “That’s What Our Love Is”: "The smell of your box on my moustache”). This enigmatic blend culminated in a beautiful rendition of a traditional Chanukah song — possibly “Lich'vod Chanukah,” and sung in Yiddish, no less — during the encore. The glorious three-part harmonies, harmonium and

Kelly’s guitar provided sumptuous textures while implicitly linking the sensual and spiritual.

THE BAD: The Babblers – who bore striking similarities to the Cairo Gang — were as tight as the headliners, and their camouflage fleece-onsies were indeed to die for. But Angela Babbler’s voice, so

soothing in the Cairo Gang set, pitched high and screechy too often here, and the middling, grinding tempos of the punk-ish numbers landed those songs in a musical no-man’s-land.

With nearly 20 years of music to draw on, there’s always a little room for regret when a wished-for favorite doesn’t make the setlist. (But here’s a big fat raspberry to the tool who yelled out “Freebird” during the encore — seriously, dude? Still with the “Freebird” chants?) The night almost seemed destined to end with the much-admired and asked-for BPB classic, “I See a Darkness.” The heart-

wrenching hymn — Oldham’s duet with Johnny Cash from 2000’s Solitary Man is arguably the most effecting moment in the entire American Recordings series — would have been a perfect bow on the evening.

THE VERDICT: A good-sized and respectful crowd will hopefully result in return visits for one of America’s best songwriters.