Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, Nathan Salsburg and Tyler Trotter – Hear The Children Sing The Evidence

Seeking out a little bit of tranquility during the first throes of fatherhood, the Kentucky-based guitarist, composer and curator Nathan Salsburg settled his daughter Talya in the crook of his arm and discovered that he could stretch the moment. Recalling the song ‘The Evidence’ by Lungfish which he had learned to play by heart in his youth, Salsburg realised that he could play the guitar part by noodling with one hand while the other rocked Talya gently to sleep. ‘It was therapeutic and calming and just lovely for me’ he says, and even more importantly it worked on her, especially as Salsburg turned the five-minute post-punk track into a fathomless ten-minute or twenty-minute or even hourlong mantra.

Talya became a toddler but the makeshift lullaby stuck in Salsburg’s brain, so he enlisted a couple of close Louisville collaborators in Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Tyler Trotter to flesh out the piece. With Salsburg on the guitar, Oldham providing his distinctive soft-spoken croon and Trotter adding drum machines and synthesizers, the trio with Will Oldham’s brother Ned on electric guitar set ‘The Evidence’ to tape over the course of one unrehearsed session, eschewing the wiriness of the original for a sweeter meditation which carries the shifting trance-like quality of a raga. Where the Baltimore stalwarts Lungfish and their lead singer Daniel Higgs honed in on the totalising terrors of a little too much enlightenment, Oldham and company highlight the pliability of the track as judgement and condemnation lean with a gentle yin and yang while callipers and calculus blossom. The trio then rounded out their record with another Lungfish cover item, a rendition of ‘Hear The Children Sing’ as if plucked from a cloud, accompanied by the longtime Grails and Watter member Zak Riles on the banjo while giving voice to both Talya and Oldham’s daughter Poppy.