Joya
It's hard to know what to make of Will Oldham, partly because he refuses ever to reveal his biography, partly because his music is opaque to the point of total blackness.  With various Palace incarnations, Oldham has obsessed over lower than lo-fi quasi-country music, and his first full length solo album, continues with his raging sonic sermons of apocalypse, despair, evil, and sex.  The sound moves slow as a 101-degree day in his native Louisville; the overall effect is troubling.--Roy Francis Kasten