Will Oldham compiled a list of his favorite music of 2009 for the current issue of Artforum. The best part was his introduction:

"The editors of this publication asked me to compile a list. They asked that I not be too esoteric, and I will try.... However, as most people are coming to realize, we as individuals are finding greater connections to smaller things; things smaller in scope and more specific to our tangible and imagined communities.

I find that the music that transports me often has a community of admirers bound together only by the love of that music. When I take a look at the dominant music news and discover that, essentially, Bruce Springsteen = Radiohead = Yeah Yeah Yeahs = Madonna = Arcade Fire = Bat for Lashes, it compels me to turn away from the lot."

Actor, musician & my mustache style icon, you may know Oldham as Bonnie "Prince" Billy aka Palace Music aka Palace Brothers aka Palace Songs, et. cetera. At the risk of overstatement, his songwriting, his flexible method of reinterpreting his own work, and the complicated system of ethics & belief which play out in his lyrics could have made him a Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen for our age.

But he's not that, and we live in a different kind of age.

Is he established? Yes. Johnny Cash covered his song "I See A Darkness" and earlier this year, Oldham subjected himself to a profile in The New Yorker. (His reluctance at cooperating with said piece acts as co-star.)

Johnny Cash (featuring Will Oldham): "I See A Darkness"

Last week it was being released as an LP on Drag City.

Does it rate with his best work? No, but Oldham's such a prolific artist, it allows for creative acts that satisfy his ethics more than his audience. And when he indulges, it makes his commitment to "smaller things; things smaller in scope and more specific to our tangible and imagined communities" ring all the more true.

May we all continue to imagine our communities into being.

(Photo via My Old Kentucky Blog)