OK, here’s the backstory on “Life Is Scary Horses,” the final advance single from Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s We Are Together Again. On their 2000 album Songs Of False Hope And High Values, Mekons members Sally Timms and Jon Langford included an original called “Horses.” Will Oldham has covered “Horses” under both his Palace and Bonnie “Prince” Billy guises. Now comes “Life Is Scary Horses,” which Oldham calls a “spiritual cover” of “Horses.”
He elaborates:
A primary reason to cover a song comes from the unanswered questions the song poses in our individual or collective psyches, and I have mulled “Horses”-generated questions over and over and over again in all sorts of circumstances until finally I thought I could bring those questions to life in a new composition, a new recording, of what can technically and essentially be called a new song.
This new song includes the lyric “Human times have come and gone/ We must accept our rule is done,” which, damn. Braden King, who directed BPB’s “Horses” video, is back with a video for “Life Is Scary Horses” featuring none other than Sally Timms, who contributes backing vocals to Oldham’s new song. King shared this statement:
This piece carries long memory. Will and I have been moving in and out of each other’s orbits for over half my life – his friendship, collaboration and music – along with Sally Timms’ own – are woven into me. Somehow, making this felt less like creating something new than uncovering something that had been waiting a long time to surface. It’s a message assembled from fragments; landscapes and symbols gathered from a world that’s slipping away and what remains when certainty is gone. As it evolved, the piece itself began to feel like a relic: an elegy left behind for a future that might not remember us – or maybe one that might be trying to learn who we were.
Oldham has similar feelings about the project:
I have worked with Braden for a few decades now, our slow burns aligning just enough to reman aware that King is one of many life-saving flotation devices in human form that I am privileged to collaborate with.
“Life Is Scary Horses” boasts a supremely pretty string arrangement by Oldham’s cousin Ryder McNair and whistling by Thomas Deakin. Watch the video below and debate in the comments whether our species maintains sovereignty over this planet.
We Are Together Again is out 3/6 on No Quarter. Buy it?
