Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Bitchin Bajas played The Sinclair – 6/22

Last month, eccentric singer/songwriter Bonnie “Prince” Billy and Chicago drone outfit Bitchin Bajas brought their collaborative tour to Cambridge’s Sinclair. 

Louisville, KY musician Will Oldham has refined his idiosyncratic style of oddly heartrending alt-folk over the course of a sprawling two-decade discography. Oldham has gone by a variety of monikers in that time, but Bonnie “Prince” Billy is the one that’s stuck. His music is unmistakably his own across every stage name, but there’s also a restlessness to his output that finds him frequently pursuing unfamiliar avenues. This year’s Epic Jammers and Fortunate Little Ditties is a prime example of that.

Jammers finds Oldham joining Bitchin Bajas, a project headed by Cooper Crain of Chicago’s preeminent psych-drone crew Cave, for an hour-long excursion into the dreamy and mysterious. The collaboration has also sent the group on the road, resulting in a rather rare Oldham appearance here in Boston.

The night was billed as “Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy and Bitchin Bajas (Together and Apart),” which resulted in some unconventional staggered scheduling. Following a brief but charming and ethereal set from Highlife, the solo guitar and voice endeavor by the London-born, NYC-based Sleepy Doug Shaw, Bitchin Bajas took the stage for a half-hour of their own time. The band belied their goofy name with subdued and beautifully contemplative music, shimmery and synth-driven. Oldham’s solo set followed, offering an all-too-brief collection of songs and comic asides delivered with just voice and acoustic guitar into a single microphone.

The two acts would then join forces for an extended finale that, like the album that spawned it, was a unique context for Oldham. He was certainly the big-name draw on the bill, but Oldham wasn’t fronting a backing band here. He contributed occasional percussion and electric guitar, but mainly provided vocals that floated over the spacey arrangements of each song, often repeating phrases like mantras. Much of the crowd was doubtless anticipating a bit more of Oldham in his more typical guitar-wielding form, but the collaborative spin of the evening kept things diverse and engaging.

Oldham is not big on having professional cameras in his immediate vicinity, so no photo passes were issued for the show. I brought my Olympus XA along, packed with a roll of Ilford 3200 film, in hopes of capturing something to share. The XA is the most pocketable and least intrusive camera I’ve ever owned, but shooting a rangefinder with an aperture priority exposure system in a dark venue is always a bit of a gamble. Thankfully (and due in part to The Sinclair’s dynamic lighting I think), I turned around some results I was pretty happy with. More photos below.