I’m startled to learn that Will Oldham has been making music now for 32 years – for the first four years as Palace (and variations thereon) and, after a brief interlude under his own name, as Bonnie “Prince” Billy. 

He’s always been hard to pigeonhole, fusing a DIY punk attitude with a stripped-back musical style that sits somewhere between folk and country without ever settling in either genre.

I was reading in The Observer last weekend that his next release was written and recorded with the cream of Nasvhille’s session musicians, leading me to expect something rather more country. And while there is at least one song like that – Our Home, with Tom O’Brien – others are not.

There is a topical number called Downstream that tackles the climate crisis in uncompromising terms, and a self-evidently political one called Guns Are For Cowards set to jaunty brass and accordion, but this is the one that caught my ear.

It’s as catchy as anything Oldham has done before, and catchiness has never exactly been the stock-in-trade of a musician who once saddled a sad song of loss with the title You’ve Got Cum In Your Hair And Your Dick Is Hanging Out.

I can still remember my bewilderment when I saw an early Palace gig, when I was unaware of the song title, and someone shouted it out at Oldham.