BY BRIAN CREECH

Walking into the Variety Playhouse in Atlanta, a low, mystical sound fills the space.  Lichens, the one person band featuring droning Chicago throat singer Robert Lowe, is playing a non-stop 45 minute set of ambient sound, whirling guitar, and other-worldly vocals.  Experiencing Lichens for the first time, I felt the same mix of awe and fear that I had the first time I watched Labyrinth or The Dark Crystal.  The ethereal drones open slowly, building a portal to a strange, weird world.  The same weird world that Bonnie ‘Prince' Billy (aka sometime actor, former Palace Brother, and Louisville native Will Oldham) would happily amble from a bit later in the night. 

Oldham has built a reputation for being the singular backwoods troubadour, at once enigmatically covering R. Kelly, mutating favorite songs, adopting countrypolitan aesthetics, and following idiosyncratic muse that is sometimes evil and knows how to use the word "fuck" perfectly.  To listen to Bonnie ‘Prince' Billy is to take what he gives without expectation.  He can infuse new life into old forms, or he can be completely impenetrable.  At the Variety playhouse, Oldham and the band were in full rambling mode, comfortably playing off one another as they re-imagined some of BPB's most personal tunes, thankfully eschewing weirdness for ecstatic melodies.

Music filled the Variety Playhouse like a fine mist, seeping into every crevice and refreshing the audience amid the tawdry Atlanta heat.  The band only took one song to gain their footing, and then launched into a version of "Nomadic Revery" that was equal parts reggae, cabaret, and guitar rock.  Like a band of gypsies gathering musical debris, they built an ethereal song out of disparate parts.  The band then launched into a much more sultry version of "Easy Does It," the album opening highlight off of last year's Lie Down in the Light.  The genre-melding spread throughout the night, as off-the-cuff musical gestures kept creeping into other Oldham standards like "Ease on Down the Road," "The Mountain Low," and "Gulf Shores."

Drummer Jim White, percussionist Peter Townsend (not THE Pete Townshend, but a talented musician still) and bassist Josh Abrams drive the band with and expressive and primal thunder, while Emmett Kelly's simple guitar flourishes mimic Oldham's own idiosyncratic vocal harmonies.  Atop the mound of road wizened musicians, fiddle player Cheyenne Miz rose like an unexpected star.  She is fearsome, beautiful and the fire in Oldham's pulpit, a fine counterpoint to his warbling mountain preacher persona.  When dueting with Oldham on the striking lover's lament "You Want that Picture," she sings like a jilted lover that any man would clearly regret leaving behind as he soared.

Yet the night's most dramatic moments came when the band would offset Oldham's warbles with their own soaring, gospel-tinged singing.  Like a mountain camp-town chorus, whenever the songs would start to lose their form and begin to meander and needle, the gospel vocals would suddenly snap everything back into attention, placing the song's form into a hard focus.  This raging chorus brought a new sense of gravity to every Oldham number, especially new songs like "Beware Your Only Friend," "You Can't Hurt Me Now," and "You are Hello," which are much more crisp and dynamic live than anything off the recent Beware.   

Towards the end of the set, a menacing figure in a hooded cape starting skulking the stage, his shadow looming constantly in the background in that classic bit of Oldham spooky weirdness.  But he tipped his hand when he asked the crowd, "Who that masked man, and why was the price tag still attached to his plastic cape?"

These moments of self-conscious theatricality played more like an inside joke between Oldham and the crowd, as if he knows that he has been at this so long, that he's no longer confounding anyone with his antics.  After leaving the stage and coming back for an encore, Oldham greeted the maw of a rapt crowd hungry for more Oldham.  The band closed out the night by covering R. Kelly's "The World's Greatest."  Trading Kelly's grandeur for his own humility though, Oldham reaffirmed his indifference at being great to anyone other than those fans who unconditionally love him anyway.