TORTOISE & BONNIE "PRINCE" BILLY: THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD

"The Brave and the Bold" is a collaborative full-length studio album by US, Chicago based post-rock act Tortoise and US singer/songwriter Joseph Will Oldham, working under his Bonnie 'Prince' Billy monicker. The album was released through Overcoat Recordings in January 2006. It bridges the gap between Tortoise´s fifth and fourth full-length studio albums "It's All Around You" (2004) and "Beacons of Ancestorship" (2009), and in the case of Bonnie 'Prince' Billy his 2005 collaborative "Superwolf" album with Matt Sweeney and his 2006 "The Letting Go" solo album.

Tortoise is predominantly knowm for playing instrumental post-rock (with influences from jazz/rock, krautrock, and dub/electronic music) while Bonnie 'Prince' Billy is mostly known for his folk/country/americana influenced music, so on paper a collaborative effort by two relatively different sounding artists sounds like an intriguing idea. Thankfully it also works well off paper.

All 10 tracks on the 39:44 minutes long album are covers of artists like Bruce Springsteen, Devo, and Elton John, but also a couple of lesser known/obscure artists. The instrumental part of the music is kept relatively simple and stripped (but still creative and never boring), and the focus is predominantly on Oldham´s warm voice and emotional delivery. Most of the songs feature a melancholic atmosphere, but there are couple of more silly tracks on the album too like album opener "Cravo E Canela" (originally by Milton Nascimento). A track which features an uplifting mood and a latin touch.

"The Brave and the Bold" is a well produced album, featuring a warm, organic, and detailed sound production, suiting the material perfectly. Not all covers albums are equally interesting, but this one is definitely in the better and more personal end of the scale. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.

Tortoise....music on the cutting edge of instrumental post rock...except for this album. Will Oldham joins Tortoise on every one of these songs making them very experimental for him, but sort of normal fare for Tortoise, except for the fact that the singing takes the limelight and pushes Tortoise instrumental beauty and ingenuity to the background. This album is still quite avant garde, but the songs individually don't always quite work very well. There is really good and really bad here, leaving an album that is inconsistent. Now, I love variety, I don't like albums that stay safe and full of same- ness, but when the odd songs don't work very well, then I find that inconsistent. Songs 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 10 work quite well and tend to lean towards an artsy indie-folkish sound which I like, but, except for track 3, are lacking in progressive elements. Songs 4, 5, 6, 7 are not very well arranged and seem convoluted and drag down the middle section of the album. I could forgive this not being a completely progressive album if the most progressive songs on here were not done so horribly wrong. But, there are a lot of other excellent Tortoise albums out there to make up for this, thank the Great Turtle God. I have to give this a 3 star rating because there are enough good songs to make it listenable, but there is too much waste on here to make it an excellent addition to a prog rock collection.