“Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You” might seem like an ominous title for an album of such simple, homespun beauty. The quiet domesticity that permeated Will Oldham’s last solo album as Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, 2019’s “I Made a Place”, can be heard at the root of the new songs, but they wear their lessons with proud and penetrating ease, less prone to guard and puzzle. They’re bare-bones, soft, and raw even when embellished by strings, horns, and backing vocals, taking their time to unwind slowly, as if to exist this way is our only salvation against destructive forces both beyond and very much in our control.
The songs on “Keeping Secrets Will Destroy You” have no choice but to live in an apocalypse, but in the you there also lives an us: if I share these and you pass them around, we might make something of our doomed time.
The Fat Angel Sings 