I See a Darkness

The sixth studio album by Will Oldham and the first under the Bonnie "Prince" Billy name came out on his own Palace Records, catalog number PR22. Its label describes it as a classic. Bob Arellano, Colin Gagon, Paul Oldham, David Pajo and Peter Townsend appear. Paul Oldham is credited with recording, Gagon and Pajo with mixing, and Pajo also played lead guitar on Song for the New Breed. Konrad Strauss mastered the record, Joe Oldham took the photograph and Sammy Harkham made a drawing.

Oldham later said the aim was to mix everything up and learn to have fun with ominous issues. Pitchfork's Samir Khan wrote in 1999 that it is warmer than the title suggests and darker than the warmth of its backdrop, and that Oldham is perhaps the greatest of human singers because he sounds like a real person. William Bowers, in Pitchfork's list of the 1990s, put it at number 9 and called it Oldham's least country album, sung without the warble. Treble counts 38 minutes of country gospel hymns, horn-laden chamber folk and funereal warnings, and Stereogum placed it first on its ranking of his albums, calling it a Gothic meditation on death and depression. It is in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.