Will Oldham, aka Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Bill Callaghan, are currently the most prominent exponents of what some call left-field alt folk/rock, and you can add quite a few epithets there. Essentially, this conglomerate of terms usually refers to quite a few artists/bands that have cropped up in the few decades that followed the nineties that simply refused to follow up within established formulas and music paths, forging their own unique ones, often with a hefty dose of weirdness and darkness.
Since he quietly started coming up with his releases, Maine musician and visual artist Greg Jamie was quickly added to the list of such artists with his initial release, Crazy Time (2018). It took Jamie some time to come up with Across A Violent Pasture, his follow-up, but it turns out that those left-field, sometimes weird, more often dark visions are intact, further developed and, well, quite fascinating.
Operating like he is preparing a detailed soundtrack for an imaginary David Lynch film, Jamie combines folkish songwriting with intermittent noise, touches of electronics, some echoing arrangements with some dark visions that you can conjure only between deep sleep and awakening, as the daylight has not broken out yet.
Such a concept can easily fall apart, but Jamie’s songwriting has a substance that firmly holds things together here, and instrumental and vocal help from guests like Josephine Foster make things (darkly) intriguing throughout.
