Drag City US Schallplatten & CDs

Review: Bonnie "Prince" Billy (Will Oldham) is a folk artist of towering stature, so the news of a new album in 2023 was nothing if not a "stop what you're doing" moment. Now coming to full-length LP format for the first time, after an initial CD and digital release, Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You hears Billy revive the spirit of folk music's roots in community and place, conjuring the wise memories of his past and fusing them with the anxieties of his present day. An all-acoustic, all-emotive album, Oldham makes constant reference to his family and people, getting at the real impossibility of divorcing oneself from community, despite the myths to the contrary peddled by merchants of the American dream.

Review: John Fahey's complex legacy reaches from his groundbreaking work in the fields of acoustic guitar and folk music through to the wild abstraction of his later years. His contraction of a debilitating virus in the 80s threw his music in unexpected directions and as a result his final years of music found him heading into increasingly challenging territory. This collection of recordings from 1995-1996 were captured at a boarding house in Oregon where he lived for a time, and veer from a capella mantras to meandering guitar studies and other extremities in between. Compelling, illuminating sounds from an artist still being comprehended more than 20 years on from his passing.

Review: Ghost are sadly an easily confused band - doubly so, for the fact that there is now a wildly popular masked metal troupe of the same name, *and* because there is, uncannily, a 1984 film named Ghost, also rather well known. This confounding is apparently so prevalent that the obligatory Wikipedia entry on *this* Ghost is titled
'Ghost (1984 band)'. We wouldn't usually mention it, save for the fact that this perhaps not so wilful obscurantism actually works in their favour. With Drag City's reissue of Ghost's first album on griseous vinyl here, it's safe to say that this Japanese experimental psych/acid record's aura as a hidden gem feels rare to come by. It's almost as if Ghost (1984) is 'haunting' the other aforementioned cultural touchstones of the same name. Don't get it twisted, though: Ghost formed in the early 80s, but this debut recording didn't make it to the pressing plant until 1990. What explains the gap in their CV, you ask? Legend has it that the band led a truly nomadic existence - as a "band" should, in all senses of the word - roving, drifting from ruined ancient temples to disused subway stations near Tokyo. With that all checked, the album itself is truly free-spirited and eerie, and not what you'd expect from contemporary notions of space rock, with prepared tinkerings and strange readymade detritus seeming to fill each piece at every twist and turn.