Bonnie Prince Billy

Alt-country's answer to Frank Abagnale, Will Oldham has recorded under such pseudonyms as Palace Brothers, Pushkin, and Superwolf. Although his work under these names has gravitated toward 11th-hour Dust Bowl despair and acoustic minimalism, Oldham has spent much of the 21st century loitering as the warbling country-gent Bonnie "Prince" Billy.

The changeling Prince is as laid-back as J.J. Cale or even Jimmy Buffett, and on Summer in the Southeast, Oldham seems lost in his own private Margaritaville -- albeit one reimagined by southern gothic writer Flannery O'Connor. Oldham's band plays wobbly, woolly drunken shout-alongs of chestnuts such as "Wolf Among Wolves" and "I See a Darkness." But it's when the band grows menacing, as it does on sinister versions of "A Sucker's Evening" and "Death to Everyone," that it unleashes the beast within.