The Palace Brothers, Days in the Wake, from 1994. Also known as The Palace Brothers (Will Oldham explained the title came to him after the album was released.)
1. You Will Miss Me When I Burn
Very beautifully, in a frail, quavering voice he begins: ‘When you have no one/ No one can hurt you’. A couplet that would be pathetic if it were not for the frailness of the delivery. Frailness: a thin voice, quavering, but also the strength in that voice to sing those words. Does he have no one (the narrator – not Will Oldham)? Out of loneliness there comes to him the strength to sing of his loneliness. He is singing.
‘In the corners there is light/ That is good for you/ And behind you, I have warned you/ There are awful things’.
Someone is being addressed. Is he speaking to himself? To another? I would say that he speaks to himself and warns himself. Light in the corners, that is, away from the centre of the room, away from open space. Away from the ‘awful things’ of that centre and perhaps the awfulness of space itself. It is to the corner that you should turn, but how not to think of the film which came out many years after this album was released where the children were told to turn to the corner before they were murdered (The Blair Witch Project)?
‘Will you miss me when I burn/ And will you eye me with a longing?/ It is longing that I feel/ To be missed for, or to be real’.
An order of words strange not enough to seem transposed from an older English. As though it came to us from the past, or from a pocket of America where they speak as though from the past. But what is he singing? Of his own obscurity, his unreality which may be transformed when he burns. He will be noticed then. But what does it mean to burn? Will he be set alight? Will he set himself alight? I wonder whether to sing, for him, is not already to have been set aflame. Then the flames are singing. The flames are singing inside him as he sings and they are singing in his voice, with it.
The first lines repeated again. They are the chorus, though they do not give the song its title.
‘Will you miss me when I burn/ And will you close the others’ eyes?/ It would be such a favour/ If you would blind them’.
He will burn. He has said he might be noticed when he burns thus. But now, a deeper desire. To burn so that he would have been seen had others eyes to see him. Eyes he would have closed to him. Eyes he asks to be put out. He will burn, he might have been noticed had he not desired that the others be prevented from seeing his burning. It is obscurity he wants. It is the corner – the same corner, perhaps, from which he sings.
‘There is absence, there is lack/ There are wolves here abound/ You will miss me when I turn around’.
Perhaps to burn is to turn from the corner to the centre of the room and to the others who are there. I have wondered whether to burn is to sing but now I think: this is a song sung into the corner. Sung strongly but quietly. Sung of that time when the narrator will turn around. Sung of that turning round which will allow others to miss him as the one who occupied the corner. Yes, he was one who dwelt in the corner, it was his place, he was safe there. He will be missed when he turns around. He knows of absence, lack and of wolves. He knows of ‘awful things’.
The chorus comes, one more time.
2. Pushkin
Why ‘Pushkin’? Who does it name? Whose name is that of the great poet, the one who made a poetic language for the Russians? Perhaps it is a name for Will Oldham himself, who said once he wanted to record under the name Push. It begins:
‘God is the answer/ God is the answer/ God is the answer/ God lies within’.
These lines sung, stated in singing. As though it were necessary to defend God, or the fact of God. Reiterated: God is the answer. And then: ‘God lies within’. Above all within, in that intimate space closed upon itself and enclosed from the world. How necessary it is to defend that intimacy, and to know that God is there in that intimacy. That the answer is already there.
Then, repeated four times, ‘And you can’t say that I didn’t learn from you’. Four times, over and again. To whom is the singer singing?
‘And I will not have a good time/ But leave me just the same/ The statue marks the place here/ Where Pushkin stood his claim’.
The narrator wants to be left alone. Exclude him; he doesn’t want a good time. He is thinking about the statue – himself? – where the one called Pushkin took his stand, made his claim (I can’t quite make out the lyrics). Is he also Pushkin? The chorus again ‘God is the answer …’ Again, the entreaty that God lies within in. It is not sung plaintively but factually. It is a fact that God is there, and one which must be sung again. Sing to reach God. Sing to remind yourself that God is there.
‘And I guess that she couldn’t tell me/ Because she found it very frightening/ And though a lead slug would have felled me/ Pushkin rides the lightning’.
The last verse. To ride the lightning – this is slang, I think, for dying in the electric chair (I think of Metallica’s first album). Pushkin dies, electrocuted. He has been punished, but for what? ‘A lead slug would have felled me’ – is Pushkin part of the narrator? An accursed part? And who is ‘she’?
The mystery should not be resolved. There is no key to this song. Someone is singing of God. Someone needs to sing of God. Someone is dying. He is called Pushkin. And someone could have been felled. Violence is close to us, but so is the one who is called God.
3. Come a Little Dog
If it’s a nonsense song, it is one sung with a peculiar intensity.
‘Come a little dog/ Come a little dog and had a little dog/ Come a little dog/ Come a little dog and had a little dog / Come a little dog’.
That’s how it begins. There are others singing besides Will Oldham and others making ‘woof woof’ noises. For the rest of the album, he’s on his own.
Those first lines are repeated over again. And then:
‘Killed a little cat, and I killed a little dog/ Killed a little cat, and I killed a little dog / Come a little dog/ Killed a little cat, and I killed a little dog / Woof woof! / Killed a little cat, and I killed a little dog / Woof woof!’
The dog who came to the narrator is dead. So to with the cat. And the ‘woof woof!’ – is this the narrators? Must he kill the dog to bark in his place?
Then the first lines again. Then:
‘Where did the little dog come from?/ The little dog came from you/ Little black spot on its little brown head/ Little dead dog, I love you’.
The dog came from ‘you’, from another. It was sent to the narrator. It arrived from somewhere, and now it is killed. The singer sounds menaced; he had done something that had to be done; it was necessary. It the fate of the dog and the cat to be killed. Of the little dog and the little cat. They were sent to him and he killed them. Is he remorseful? He feels it had to be done. Now, it is done and he sings his strong song of justification.
4. I Send My Love to You
A tender song, sung lovingly. A song for those in love to put on compilation tapes.
‘I send my love to you/ I send my hands to you/ I send my clothes to you/ I send my nose to you/ I send my trees to you/ I send my pleas to you/ Won’t you send some back to me’.
A funny song, a tender song, an absurd song. What is sent? Love, hands, clothes, nose, trees, pleas … happy words that rhyme with one another. Now he wants something sent back, not in exchange, but also as a kind of gift.
‘Send your ways to me/ Send your call to me/ Send your days to me/ Send it all to me/ And when I’m high and square/ When I would have you there/ You will be’.
What does he want to receive? The ways, the calls, the days of another. It sounds that he is singing of one who loves him. He sounds secure in his love and that love will be returned. There is nothing sinister here. Nothing awkward. Loving is possible, living is possible, and there’s a great circuit of exchange where each gives themselves to the other. Whether each is given and known by their possessions or their features, by the trees they see or the day they live.
‘The moon is falling/ The wounds are calling/ My head is bleeding/ And I’m a duck/ The lake is cracking/ It hears me quacking/ Fuck the land and the two if by me’.
What has happened? You can hear the same loving tone in Will Oldham’s voice, the same happy whimsy. But love has crept out from the lovers and changed the universe. The moon falls; the wounds call; his head bleeds – what has happened? Is there such a thing as a happy wound or a joyful bleeding? Are we to laugh? The singer has become a duck. He quacks; the lake cracks, but what of the call to fuck the land? The word ‘fuck’ is always used very beautifully by Will Oldham. It is a name for a godly act, for something holy.
‘I Send my Love to You’ ends with a higher, more plaintive version of the second verse. He is waiting for love to be sent; he needs it to be sent. But I think, too, he expects it to be sent.
5. Meaulnes
What does that name mean? Perhaps it is a place. Four times repeated, the opening line: ‘And he came by the way that he walked’. He came – past tense. He is here. And he came as he walked and in his walking. He came by walking. How not to think of the Messiah?
‘And he came by the way of a half-million murderers/ And he came by the way of a long list of ironies/ And he came by the way of the road to Sioux City/ And he came by the way of the half-breeds and lesbians’.
These lines make me feel uncomfortable. It’s nearly as bad as in the song by Beck ‘… making all the lesbians scream’. And ‘half breeds’: there is something brutal in this word. Half this, half that. The half breeds and the lesbians alongside the murderers: presumably a version of St Lawrence’s treasures of the church, of the ones with whom the Messiah will come. The Messiah is there among the poor, the marginal, the disenfranchised. He is in the most prosaic places, on the road to Sioux City and perhaps on every road.
The chorus again. And now:
‘And he thought it was in there but still wasn’t happy/ He knew it was less than the way that it could be/ But undaunted, unshaven and an eagle in britches/ He set out again to unveil the world’s riches’.
Who is he? Desirous, with knowledge of what the world could be, he sets out to reveal the riches of the world. The riches, one presumes by which he comes to us. Those who have sinned, those at the fringes. As he walks, unshaven, undaunted, he brings the apocalypse, the great unveiling, and one which proceeds by way of those outside.
The chorus again (‘And he came by the way that he walked’).
‘And he came by the way that I said I was leaving/ The way that I’d take if I really was going/ If I had a map, that is why I’m delaying/ And if it wasn’t in there I’d surely be staying’.
The narrator would go if he had a map. He’s delaying, waiting. Perhaps, mapless, he hopes he can say to meet the one who is coming. Why do I think he will wonder on regardless, missing the coming of the walker? Missing the Messiah (isn’t there a Ray Bradbury short story about the Messiah who comes to each of the settlements on Mars?) Perhaps you can only miss him. Perhaps he comes only when you are not there. This is the price, the price of knowing he is coming. The apocalypse (the unveiling) for everyone but you.
6. No More Workhouse Blues
‘Many lights up today/ Many lights up this way’.
The first lines of ‘No More Workhouse Blues’. ‘What is this road here/ Where have I come?’ Wandering again. The surprise of lights (a city? a town?) and the surprise of a town (has he come from the wilderness?). The surprise, above all, of arrival.
‘I am a rich man/ I am a very rich man/ I have good pants on stitched and stitched’.
Why is richness linked to good pants? Because this is an ironical richness, a laughing wealth. He doesn’t have money, he wanders, but he has trousers for wandering. ‘I am in stitches/ I am laughing at you/ I am in britches’.
‘I’ve written books for you/ I held my own for you/ Where is my tongue?’
The narrator addresses someone. A lover? A beloved? Are the books real or imaginary? To hold my own suggests restraint and waiting. And he seems silent, too, the narrator – or at least he cannot speak now, at the moment he wants to. But he sings. He is singing of the tongue he does not have. But perhaps this means he will never finds the speech with which he could speak.
Sounds of thunder (real thunder, a rainstorm outside the kitchen where this album was recorded). Ominious. Then, four times: ‘I am no more a workhorse’. Sung with defiance. He is no longer one who labours. He has fallen away from production, from productivity. He is wandering.
Then, still more strongly, but from a strength born from suffering:
‘I am a racing horse/ I am a grazing horse/ I am your favourite horse’.
There are already three other songs about horses Will Oldham has sung on previous records. How important they are to him and Bill Callahan! A racing horse runs ahead of the others, confident in its strength and speed. It is free, the image of freedom. A grazing horse is at peace in the meadow, free from work. And ‘your favourite horse’: the narrator knows he is loved. He is the favourite one, the favoured one.
This is not a laughing song. No More Workhouse Blues, it’s called. No more blues. It is time for joy. Even the lights surprise him. The whole world surprises him. He has come to it again and as if for the first time. Ah, but he has sruggled to find it thus. He is still full of pain.
7. All is Grace
‘The blessed grace of waking up, of breathing in the sheets/ And hello to you at the window, hello to you’. The narrator rests in the bosom of the world. He wakes and – I imagine, but I am also thinking of Will Oldham in Tripping with Caveh speaking of how he addresses the sun and the moon – says hello to the sun. But it is a real person, a ‘you’ to whom he speaks.
‘Down the hill I’d like to take you where I shot a little deer/ My little dear, I’d like to take you down there/ Rinsing out an iron cup to have a glass of wine/ To have an iron cup of wine, dear, to drink it down there’.
Is it a feast of which he dreams? A little celebration (the word ‘little’ is important)?
‘A drunken pair, goodbye despair/ One night is ’till one morning’. Drunk, drinking wine out of humble cups, they drink away despair. ‘And one sad night you held me by/ And held me until it was morning’.
Sadness never lasts.
‘And once the temperature did fall, goodnight to father/ Mother/ My bambina was all in for a while/ All is grace tonight to you and tomorrow we will be/ And tomorrow we shall see/ And tomorrow, too’.
These are days lived at the edge of the future, as the present breaks forward into the future. Every day turns in grace; grace is reborn every morning and every morning is tomorrow when grace will shine through all things. The shot deer is part of grace. The iron cup of wine is likewise graced. The narrator sings of the grace he shares, of a shared grace which includes everything in his world. The song is called ‘All is grace’.
8. Whither Thou Goest
‘A sickroom hush, a holiday glow/ Whither thou goest I will go/ Whither thou wish inside/ We will follow’.
Where you go, I will go. Where you go, be it the sickroom or the holiday, we will follow you. And who are you? One addressed in the old form of the second person. One who is loved, who deserves respect. Who is addressed with tenderness.
‘It is to be on one thing only/ On the road to God knows where/ Some are happy, some are late/ And those wish death upon themselves’.
This is a song about passing, about movement. Those who are happy are the ones who are punctual, who are not late. The late ones want death. But what have they missed? The wandering of which the narrator sings? Are they late to meet the one who wanderers, and is the wanderer again the Messiah?
‘There is law, it is spoken/ In a growl choked/ Her paws have strayed in her sleeve/ And in my mouth her cloak’.
How calmly it is sung! The music is simple, the vocal melody barely there. The voice is frail, but he sings of the law. The law spoken in a choked growl – by an animal?
‘The claws fists [?] swift deny themselves a shallowness/ Which recalled the television or the room alone/ In which they preened unmoving fours/ My loving tounge’.
How peculiarly these lines scan. Lines too long to fit the music. Yet they are made to fit, as though very important.
‘Convolutions may arise/ The skull is echoing with webs/ And the third wave flushed the thing out/ Everybody jump and shout’.
‘Scream my name above the din/ Above the engine’s carnal din/ Above the calves who bleed their lungs out/ Baa baa moo moo baa baa baa’.
There is no need to translate what is sung into a calmer idiom. These lines cannot be paraphrased. To repeat them here, detaching them from the music they accompany is already a crime. There are animals, ones with paws and claws and others, the calves, who are killed. The name of the narrator is to be called out above the engines. But what is that name, and who is calling? The last line: ‘baa baa moo moo baa baa baa’: is that the name of the one who sings? And who calls? Not the killed calves, the ones who have no air in their lungs from which to sing, but living ones, perhaps, or other living animals.
Listening, I think of the paintings of Chagall, the early ones, before the kitsch. Animals, farmyards, pain and joy together and always the sense that God is close. I think of the paintings from the second world war where those same animals and farmyards are torn apart. Yet this is a song sung calmly and tenderly. ‘Baa baa moo moo baa baa baa’: a line from a nursery rhyme. Is it this which triumphs, the nursery rhyme which sings before and after the ‘carnal engines’?
9. (Thou Without) Partner
When Will Oldham sings this song, it is with a wise voice. The song’s narrator has seen and done many things; he knows the hidden law.
‘Nighttime’s the right time to pull all the dimes from your pocket/ Nighttime’s the right time to climb on the rocket/ Nighttime’s the right time to pull your shoulder out of its socket/ Nighttime’s the right time to learn a new language’.
This is a nocturne, a song about the time when it is appropriate for several kinds of action. There’s a marvellous refrain in this song: ‘cosmonauts flying, cosmonauts dying’ as though to fly in the night is also to die there. As though the night is always a time of risk, where a great deal is at stake.
‘You picked a fine time to tell me it was time to find me a new wife/ You picked a fine way to tell me that today would be the last day/ When is the first day you’ll repay the money that you owe me?/ A sisterly severance, a cutting of cookies, adios fraternos’.
A loan has been transacted and now a debt must be repaid. It is night; there are cosmonauts in the sky. It is a time of dying. The song is ominious, it is sung ominously. The narrator has been told he has to find a new wife. Is it his former wife who is telling him this? Is it she who has spoken to him and to him that she is indebted? If so, it is time for her to join the cosmonauts. It is a time for injury and for learning a new way to speak. These are ways of say that her fate is unknown. She has left him but she will pay.
Now:
‘When will she run to me?/ When will she come to me?/ O buenos dias/ O buenas noches’.
The song picks up, Will Oldham’s voice lifts. The cookies have been divided, a severance has occurred, goodbye, friend (a male friend?).
‘No mercy you have shown me/ How could a woman with so much to live for have so many children?/ When time came to call names she bolted and left me an unlabelled burden’.
What mysteries! He is unnamed, the one who sings; he has not recieved the name his wife was to give him (but is he singing now of his wife?) In lieu of a name, he is a burden to the world. She has children, not his perhaps, and many of them: she has others to care for, apart from him. He has been cast out. Perhaps the children all have names.
Again the refrain: ‘Cosmonauts flying, cosmonauts dying’ and the new line: ‘Astronauts starving, astronauts leaving’. Those who went among the stars and into the darkness are dying and leaving; they’ve given up.
‘No more hospitality, no more hospitals at all/ When was the first time you realised the next time would be the last time?’
The narrator is cast out; he lives in the outer darkness. No hospitality for him, no rest or dwelling place. He has been cast out and what hurts is the fact that a decision was taken, that the time came for him to be cast out. He didn’t know when it was, but it happened. It happened in another, the one he calls his wife. And now he is cast out.
This is the penultimate song on the album. It leaves me uncertain. Nothing is resolved. With what must his wife pay? With her life, like the cosmonauts? With her dwelling place, like the astronauts? And what will be done to extract the debt? And why, tenderly, does the narrator address her (if I’m reading this properly) as ‘thou’?
10. I am a Cinematographer
This is one of the most marvellous of Will Oldham’s songs. It ends the album, it is the mood with which we are to be left as it comes to completion.
‘I am a cinematographer’ repeated four times. Sung as though to be a cinematographer is a well-worn craft, that it is a profession the narrator rests in, as though it explains a great deal.
‘And I walked away from New York City/ And I walked away from everything’s that good/ And I walked away from everything I leaned on/ Only to find it’s made of wood’.
A cinematographer wanders. To walk away is what is proper to cinematography; it is part of the craft. Does he sound wistful as he sings? That it should be otherwise? He is neither wistful nor resigned; he does what cinematographers must do.
Then, four times, ‘I was a big old bear once’. This is a happy line. The cinematographer was once a bear, but now he’s a cinematographer and he must leave what was known to him.
‘And I walked away from California/ And I walked away from everything that’s known/ And I walked away from everything I lived for/ Only to find that everything had grown’.
He leaves. He is not a director or a best boy, but a cinematographer, so it must fall to him to wander, to leave what he knows. Why here do I think of the peculiar protagonists of Herzog’s Stroszek, lost in a vast America? How vast America is, I think to myself, and how lost you can get there. And then I think: how far from the sea if you are in the centre.
The chorus again, and then: ‘If you were alone / You can walk away from Louisville alone’. If you were along … but are you alone? If not, then you cannot leave Louisville. You will not be the cinematographer, the one who in Will Oldham’s strange universe, embodies movement and departure.
Now the album is over, all 27 minutes of it. But we are left with a figure of joy.
How beautiful and mysterious this song of resolve and the open road! How beautiful and mysterious Will Oldham allows the word cinematographer to become!
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