In his review of last year's exceptional Lie Down in the Light, Stephen Deusner noted just how consistent Will Oldham's output had become, bemoaning somewhat Oldham's inability to truly excite. But there's a yin to that yang, that being Oldham has amassed such an army of friends and co-conspirators that he can create an album of Lie Down's quality without excessive pressure or to-do. For the second year in a row, Oldham drops a fully-formed, gorgeously wrapped disc with little buildup, though Beware will receive a promotional bump (a small tour and, in some markets, local-cable commercials) that Oldham begged off of Lie Down. Beware moves Oldham closer still to proper country music, uprooting some of Lie Down's balmy Appalachian posts for robust, quivering compositions recorded with an almost entirely new group of musicians.
So Beware is Oldham's "big" record (touring, promotion, etc.), but musically the album seems in many ways smaller-- or at least more level-- than Lie Down. Beware contains no sentiment as scintillating as "So Everyone"'s ode to public intimacy, no melody quite as curvaceous as "For Every Field There's a Mole", and its considerably more ominous artwork and lyrical content feel more in line with Oldham's norms. From its imperative title to "Afraid Ain't Me"'s final instructions to "Work, baby," Oldham seems more inclined than ever to instruct and guide, a move befitting his age, experience, and the role he plays in the indie-rock community.
It's a role that, predictably, Oldham turns upside down within moments of the album's first lines, circling the title's sure-handed warning around himself: "Beware of me." Oldham acolytes already know this, as Oldham often fibs-- or "sings in character," to be judicious-- but Beware still stands as Oldham's sagest album yet, with many of its poignant moments arriving as knowing declarations. It's strange to suggest that Oldham is suddenly somehow wiser, but Beware doesn't lack for perspective. He talks lovingly of children, pokes fun at his physique, and receives an "unfinal call"-- a warning-- from an angel. When on the lover's hymn "My Life's Work" Oldham says, "I take this load on/ It is my life's work," he could just as easily be talking about the burdens of cult artistry.
Elsewhere, the familial comforts of Lie Down have been replaced with ribald, cowboy promiscuity. Oldham's characters' relationships with women have developed into a loving, frustrating dependence: "It's kind of easy to have some fun/ When you don't belong to anyone." He occasionally aims for the type of woebegone romanticism Jack White's been hamming at for years, singing during the goofy horn-led rocker "You Don't Love Me", "You say my kissing rates a six on a scale of one to 10/ And you wouldn't pass the time with me 'cept you're tired of all your friends." When he commits, divulging that he wants to be your "only friend," he's immediately on the defensive: "Is that scary?"
Beware's backing cast might lean a bit hard on conventional arrangements, but even when Oldham's not turning American musics on their heads, he paws at them playfully. Songs spire heartily upwards ("You Are Lost") or move in fits ("Heart's Arms"); buzzing slide guitars and plucked banjos don't sound laconic, they sound nervy. Sometimes the convention-chucking is more explicit, like the flutes and flanged guitars of the ropey "I Am Goodbye" or the twiddling marimba on "You Can't Hurt Me Now". The resultant songs have a familiarity that aims them toward the back of your brain but an internal energy that prods them into prominence with repeated listens.
Oldham has once again surrounded himself with voices, lending credence to the characters and modes he slips in and out of. Unlike Lie Down's Ashley Webber or The Letting Go's Dawn McCarthy, Jennifer Hutt and Emmett Kelly (among others) serve less as foils than as gatherers, doubling and tripling Oldham's creak like some gospel-not-gospel choir. It is warm and well-felt music, to the point where the message of a song like "I Don't Belong to Anyone" might differ substantially had a younger Oldham performed it sans accompaniment ("Don't Belong" is followed, incidentally, by "There Is Something I Have to Say", the lone, croaky Beware track that might've fit on Master and Everyone).
The sheer number of roles that Oldham inhabits, however, should prevent anyone from drawing hard conclusions about his state of mind. Beware feels more severe and less physical than Lie Down, but Oldham still talks about his tummy on two separate occasions. It feels wise, but there's Oldham, hooting and whooping during "I Am Goodbye". It feels content in its place, but there's the commercial during "Ellen" in the New Orleans market. When Oldham sings, "I know everyone knows the trouble I have seen/ That's the thing about trouble you can love," he might well be jiggling his belly at artist-audience relationships. Impossible to say whether Oldham's being candid or goofing on despair, but either way, he's earned the right.
