Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – ‘We Are Together Again’ album review: Country that channels hope in the face of adversity
Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy is the name under which singer-songwriter Will Oldham has performed for nearly 30 years. On We Are Together Again, he and his gathering of friends from his musical enclave in Louisville, Kentucky, come together to centre humanity in our world’s uneasy state.
The Skinny: Despite the weight of the lyrical content, much of which centres on the sensation of an inescapable dread and reckoning with the lack of means to combat it, all of the song’s arrangements are conversely melodic, grounding the panic with a sense of calm. Rooted in country and folk, the compositions are slowed, with strings quietly building in the background to Oldham’s vocals, both haunting and hopeful.
We Are Together Again is bookended by ‘Why is the Lion?’ and ‘Bride of the Lion’, two sides of the same coin that harness soft melodies to ease into confrontations of fear, anguish and discomfort. Oldham mourns “the minds of our best”, which “are kidnapped, imprisoned; soon they will all disappear.” His voice and those of his friends encounter even more, building into a sense of hope that gleams in the midst of it all: “Is it my voice, or, better yet, ours?”, Oldham asks.
That sense of chasing normalcy in light of uncertainty permeates the album, like on ‘Strange Trouble’, which searches for salvation in the questions, “Where is the spirit? Where is the guide?”, avoidant to the fact that perceived trouble and change may very well be the same thing. “Don’t we love the taste of trouble,” Oldham concedes, “and don’t we pray for beneficent change?” ‘Life Is Scary Horses’ lives up to its name, telling a story of persistence in the face of all of life’s adversity.
There is the evident push and pull between isolation and community, with Oldham encouraging an embrace of the latter on songs like ‘(Everybody’s Got a) Friend Named Joe’, dedicated to a friend who has the ability to pull you out of the depths of despair. ‘They Keep Trying To Find You’ is caught in this despair, telling the story of someone physically unable to escape their own mind, confined to their home and avoidant of reality. But the overarching hope prevails, and the song becomes a warning of being too consumed in loneliness.
Joy overcomes all else on songs like ‘Vietnam Sunshine’ and ‘Hey Little’, the latter dedicated to the inexplicable love of a child as he watches them grow up. Poignantly, Oldham proclaims, “And you’re little now, but you will create the day that we never knew could be, so be thoughtful on your way.” These moments are in contrast with subsequent ones of sorrow: ‘Davey Dead’ is a story of tragedy unfolding, as harps and strings reckon with such sadness with a wistful tone. ‘The Children Are Sick’ acknowledges pain and strife, but looks to the community as a rescue, summarised brilliantly with the line: “This mortal has immortal needs, satisfied wholly today by an army of friends staunching blood where she bleeds.”
The Verdict: We Are Together Again oscillates from moments of anguish and those of joy – or, at the very least, those in which joy is not too far out of sight. Strengthened in Oldham’s storytelling, the sentiments are performed with simple arrangements that allow for the messages to shine through.
Standout Track: ‘Strange Trouble’
Release Date: March 6th, 2026 | Producers: Will Oldham & Jim Marlowe | Label: Domino/No Quarter
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