What is it that makes "Arise Therefore" the latest Palace property, so exquisitely and identifiably the work of 24-year old Louisville native Will Oldham? Maybe I should ask Will himself, seeing as he is, effectively, Palace.
Will sits across from me smiling kindly as I suggest the lyrics seem more prominent than ever against the (sort of) country-blues-folk musical accompaniment of "Arise Therefore". I also suggest that Oldham's mastery of imagery and language in the celebratory "Disorder", or the perspective-shifting "The Sun Highlights The Lack In Each", brings the album closer to poetry than pop. And he just smiles.
"I'm not sure how much of a compliment that is, thinking of most poetry," replies the only musician I've ever seen without a book. An actor until he took up Palace and music simultaneously at 19, Will says he doesn't hold much with poetry that doesn't rhyme. But most pop records don't use language the way you do. Even calling an album "Arise Therefore" doesn't sound like pop language.
"What kind of language is that?" Will inquires
Heightened language, I guess. Most pop language is workaday, sloppy.
"Like spoken language? I guess the music I've been fond of is not a speakable language. Like Glenn Danzig", he adds casually. "Nobody talks like that. Nobody uses those words, those images, in everyday life, ever. But every single line, every single song of his is like that.
"Sometimes it's ridiculous, sure," he adds as I giggle. "But sometimes it's not. I really think lyrics should be heightened language."
But Palace lyrics aren't just heightened. Songs like "The Weaker Soldier", with it's talk of "the good death" and "rightful due", or "Kid Of Harith", whose title sounds like pure Old Testament, sound like they spring from a moral centre that's either much older, or more severe, than the way the rest of us think.
"I don't see good and evil or punishment coming into any of the songs," says Will. I think he's enjoying this.
Why do his songs mention curses, enduring love, higher powers, forces beyond the material world?
Will listens patiently, waiting for me to hit the right one.
"I guess," he says softly, "I don't see that much difference between what you'd call the morality in my songs, and a Cranberries song, or what's plasticised or McDonaldised in an Oasis song. It's the same, or a similar, concept of reality. I don't see it straying that far from the thousand songs I've heard, anywhere from Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel to Jonathan Richman. It all seems like it comes from the same source."
Still, fate comes up quite a lot. Are you a fatalist?
"I don't think we have a choice about anything like that," he parries.
So you are a fatalist?
"That's an outside opinion. Though I can't imagine anyone thinking differently," he laughs, finally awarding me one pitifully small point.
What's the cruelest thing you've ever written?
"It's be a toss up," he muses, pausing. "But nobody's time is up yet, so it's impossible to judge what is cruel or beneficial."
He's starting to talk like his songs, I note with a certain satisfaction.
Do you believe in hell?
"On a personal level, which is outside of music and profession, I am aware of the fact that...the more you do wrong, the more you are likely to spend a good deal of time in a very unpleasant situation."
Does evil exist? Are you a moral relativist?
"What does that mean?" he asks, mock innocently. The devil.
Not a black and white worldview, I guess. A "whatever works for you", laissez-faire approach to morality.
Long pause, and then "I don't know how to answer that."
Of course, when all else fails, you can ask about the swear words. The man who memorably announced his desire, presumably metaphorically, to "fuck a mountain" on 1992's highly acclaimed "Viva Last Blues", has returned with another exuberant fuck or six on this album's "A Sucker's Evening".
So what's with the fucks, Will?
"Ahh, somebody asked me that two weeks ago," he brightens.
I'm not surprised. He was probably fishing as hard as I am.
"No, it's fine, so I've figured out a good answer: it's a good signifier. Because it's such a strong word, it is absolutely not devoid of significance, but also has a great multitude of ever-expanding meanings.
"It can also be used without having to challenge my, or any listener's, potential limited vocabulary," he adds wryly. "I could use that word and have it really mean something, but not have the meaning be a verbalised thing. There's not another word that you can use to substitute for so many intentions each time it appears. It's a variable, but a limited variable, a variable over Pi. For each person it's going to have some proportion of positive and negative. Some proportion of aggressiveness and complacency. You could say 'fuck him' and it could mean forget him, or it could mean mess him up; do something wrong to him or don't do anything to him.
"Or," adds Will, slyly, "it could mean do something very good to him."
We're not getting any closer to what makes Will's at once reassuring and unsettling music - with it's shifting line-up of supporting musicians and evolving monikers like Palace Brother, Palace Songs, and on the last two albums, Palace Music - what it is. Or are we?
People - especially those of us farther away than, say, Ohio - reckon you sound the way you do because you're from The South.
"Kentucky isn't officially a southern state, it was a border state in the Civil War," he corrects. "Even then I think there are similarities, even in the most backwoods parts, with people who live in, say, the backwoods of Pennsylvania. Not necessarily with the rest of the state."
Now we've cleared that up, is it irritating to have your musical approach ascribed to your place of birth?
"I would say that dwelling upon that relationship is not beneficial to the appreciation of the music," he says.
"I don't necessarily understand what it would be about Kentucky, what the connection with my music would be. It wouldn't necessarily be geographic. It's not like anybody came to Louisville to me; these records came out in the other direction. And so they're part of music in general.
One of the most enthusiastic audiences I ever saw was in New York City for a Johnny Cash show. If a thousand people in New York could be fanatic about his music, obviously that music has left whatever geography it ever had.
"That's the greatest thing about music," he adds, seemingly confident that I'm following him at last.
"It's the geography of the mind. No one's ever mapped out where music is."