Will Oldham is a master of making the most with very little. Under the moniker Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, the Kentucky singer-songwriter has been creating beautifully gut-wrenching songs over minimal folk compositions since the early 90s. Eschewing the use of percussion as the domincant rhythmic force in his music, he brings us back to an older time when sparse acoustic guitar and simple basslines could be powerful if the singer has something compelling enough to tell. Playing to his strengths of simplicity and fine story-telling, Oldham's most recent offering, Wolfroy Goes To Town, is some of his best work of late.

His first album, 1993's There Is No-One What Will Take Care of You (under the name Palace Brothers) is about as overwhelming and dynamic as a gentle folk record can get. With its troubled-family-members/fallen-servant-of-God themes and humanly imperfect compositions, it was an exceedingly pained and heart-breaking endeavor. Oldham quickly became the eminent and exalted king of the newly emerging indie-folk movement.

It could be argued that over the past few years, however, Oldham has “fallen-off” a bit. Though his lyrical proficiency never quite faltered, and nothing he's released can be empirically labeled “bad,” the singer's last few albums offer an over-expansive exploration of genres and an over-reliance on production quality. There is a greater emphasis on instrumentation and guest players on albums like Beware and The Wonder Show of the World, and with their tight compositions, they sound a bit too NPR-ready to convey the spontaneity and emotional thrust of Oldham's earlier work.

In this light, Wolfroy can be seen as a much-welcomed return to form for the folk anti-hero. The record opens with the country-leaning twang of “No Match,” a song in which the lyricist utilizes his familiar theme of a narrator torn between world-weary surrender and lesson-learned empowerment. “New Whaling” follows and takes listeners in a darker direction, with it's Aeolian fingerpicking and haunting call-and-answer refrain, “So far and here we are.” The songs establish the story-teller as having traveled for far too long, and a band that was with him all the (troubled and trying) way.

“New Tibet” and “Black Captain” feature prominent vocal accompaniment by Angel Olsen, whose loosely arranged harmonies provide a gentle prettiness that compounds the lyrical turmoil with a sensation of hopefulness. “Quail and Dumplings” is a definite high point on the record, with it's catchy bluegrass chorus and a driving psuedo-psychedelic bridge that sounds like an Appalachian Jefferson Airplane.

Wolfroy isn't without its weaknesses. “Time To Be Clear” and “We Are Unhappy” establish a pretty folk-scape without ever encroaching into poignant territory. Some of the melodies grow repetitive and overstay their welcome without unfurling into anything of the emotional import we've come to expect from the songwriter. But all of Oldham's albums, going back to There Is No-One, have their unintentional lulls, and as a whole this is a tightly-woven record, in spite of – or even thanks to – its structural looseness and thematic deliberation.