14. Master And Everyone (2003)

Will Oldham’s career is a perpetual balancing act with stark lo-fi on one side and multi-layered full-band productions on the other. For 2003’s Master and Everyone, the scales tipped to lo-fi for the first time since 1996’s Arise Therefore. But despite the lower production values, Master is one of Oldham’s most easily-digestible albums. What it is not, however, is one of his most memorable. Eschewing both the traditional storytelling of Ease Down The Road and the stream-of-consciousness sound and fury of his early work, Oldham opts for the easy-going repeated phrases of gospel music on songs like “Maundering,” “The Way,” and “Joy and Jubilee.”

The songs are all very nice-sounding, and all the melodies and harmonies fit together as cleanly as Lego bricks, but I’m not sure there’s a single guitar riff here that hasn’t been played a thousand times before. Sure, simplicity has its own charms, but only if it makes you feel something. And sadly, Master and Everyone is as unambitious emotionally as it is musically.