Crawdaddy! The Magazine of Rock

Originally published in The Independent, February 2000

It’s only the first week in February and already spring’s sonic daffodils are poking through the boy-band mulch. Those who feared they would live their whole lives without seeing Mercury Rev and Tony Christie in the same Top 20 singles chart can now rest easy. And a double bill of albums every bit as deliciously twisted as that unlikely coupling has got 1999 off to a flyer in the long-playing stakes. Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s I See a Darkness and Knock Knock by Smog are the sort of records decades get remembered for, never mind years.

Both are released on the same label—Wandsworth-based boutique imprint Domino Records, which has for some years been carving out a reputation as Britain’s most inspired independent—and both were made by serious-seeming Americans with a lot of history behind them. Bill Callahan, aka Smog, and Will Oldham, aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy, sit stiffly in different South West London bars, eager to explain themselves.

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