D.V. DeVINCENTIS
SUPERWOLVES Written over the past five years, Superwolves is the product of a generally fixed process: Oldham writes lyrics and sends them to Sweeney, who comes up with music and a melody line, before both then bat the piece back and forth until it’s finally finished. “When I was a child, I was taught that if you speak two languages, you’re worth two men,” says Oldham, discussing their partnership. “Music is a kind of language, and the reason to learn it is to connect and communicate with somebody else.” The 14 songs on Superwolves are growers with the feel of long-loved classics, expertly and sensitively arranged, played and sung, with an assurance born from experience. Such is the spirit of collaboration powering the project, this time Oldham and Sweeney also brought some friends along, including Nigerien guitarists Mdou Moctar and Ahmoudou Madassane, as well as Nashville bassist and longtime Oldham collaborator David Ferguson. David Blaine and David Berman are present too, in spirit at least. “I think Matt and Will bring the best out of each other,” says Ferguson. “They have the ability to really listen to the other guy and do something that makes the other guy’s parts even better.” “Will’s process isn’t strictly goal-oriented,” says Nathan Salsburg, who’s worked, often alongside Joan Shelley, on multiple Oldham releases, such as 2019’s I Made A Place. “It was also about the joy of making music in enjoyable company.” That sentiment perhaps rings even truer for Oldham’s work with Sweeney. To elucidate on the story of the record, the pair are video-calling Uncut to also tell the tale of their friendship,
one that spans Manhattan bars and London dressing rooms, taking in validation in Louisville playgrounds and the joys of getting “comfortable with the apocalypse”. “One of the things that made Matt and I connect,” says Oldham, “is that we were ready and willing and eager to go deep fast, and then we could change subjects and move on with our lives. You don’t really encounter that in a lot of people – and usually, if you do, you realise, often too late, that the person you’ve gone deep fast with is mentally ill.” “Playing with Will at first was really a time of trying new things,” says Sweeney. “I’d been playing loud rock music in Chavez, and it was an opportunity to do something else, to accompany a singer whose songs weren’t like any songs I’d written before, certainly someone I really loved and appreciated.”
The dynamic duo in 2005. Above: sleeves for “Little Boy Blue”, “Let’s Start A Family” and Slint’s Spiderland
“AM I HAPPY WITH WHAT I’VE MADE? OH YEAH” WILL OLDHAM
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HEN Uncut speaks to Will Oldham, he’s in the attic of his home in Louisville, Kentucky, clutching what appears to be a pint of coffee. “When my daughter was born a couple of years ago, I had to move my recording stuff into the attic,” he says. “We bought a coffee machine a few months ago and put it up here, and now my wife and I use it as a refuge in the morning, taking turns. It’s awesome, it’s the best room in the house!” Matt Sweeney is in his apartment in Manhattan, presumably not far from where the pair first met in the late 1990s, though neither exactly remembers the first encounter. What is certain is that Sweeney was at that time sharing a Bowery loft with former Slint and Breeders drummer Britt Walford, who had grown up with Oldham in Louisville; a well-known piece of trivia being that Oldham shot the cover for Slint’s Spiderland. “I feel like it was summer,” says Sweeney. “I seem to remember being outside, checking out New York. There was a lot of hanging with David Berman at the time, a lot of memorable hanging at the Mars Bar, a famous bar that looked like pirates could have lived in there. Halcyon memories? Faded ones, sure, but good.” “What did we bond over?” asks Oldham. “Everything that people bond over: music and life, the meaning of life.”
