BBC - Celtic Connections Festival 2012

Bonnie Prince Billy

Old Fruitmarket

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Harmonium player Ben Boye.

Bonnie Prince Billy with guitarist Emmett Kelly

Richard Bull reports

When Will Oldham emerged nearly twenty years ago, it felt like there were only three or four alternative country bands. Now it seems there are three or four million, a large proportion of which are formed in Will Oldham's image. Since settling on the alias Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, he's gone way beyond alt-country and established himself at the head of a whole new genre of folkish strangeness, with disciples in every town.

On Sunday night I was thrilled to be part of a capacity crowd at the Old Fruitmarket, paying homage to our offbeat idol and his unique voice, wonky yet spellbinding. His songs too are like no others: ancient dreams, which share their vocabulary with the Old Testament, with all the dirty bits left in. Only the creaks of the venue's ageing upper level disturbed our awestruck silence.

The musical backing was sublime. It was country made sparse and slowed right down. But not bleak. Emmett Kelly's guitar and Ben Boye on piano, autoharp and harmonium, added warmth, and subtly propelled the songs forward, even when the pace dropped below funereal. Angel Olsen's powerful voice, along with Emmett's, added further fortification.

For a lot of the crowd this gig would have been their sole Celtic Connections outing of 2012. But Will declared himself thrilled to be part of the festival. He was here at the invitation of Nuala Kennedy, having taken part in her concept piece, Astar, a couple of nights earlier. (In 2006 he toured Scotland with her band Harem Scarem. A concert recorded for Mary Ann Kennedy's Global Gathering was subsequently released as Is It The Sea?). He also expressed amazement that he'd just had the opportunity to see Martin Simpson, June Tabor and Dick Gaughan performing together. In tribute he added I Never Thought My Love Would Leave Me, learnt from a June Tabor record, to the set.

His own songs were drawn from across the Bonnie 'Prince' Billy albums, with a concentration on the two most recent, The Wonder Show Of The World and Wolfroy Goes To Town. Now entering his forties, he seems only to be improving at his craft. The oldest song played was his best known, I See A Darkness, but, contrarily and unlike everything else, it was delivered sped up.

He's an unimaginably eccentric presence. As he sang, he stood on one leg, he grabbed his jeans, he gesticulated, his hands thrust heavenwards, with fingers splayed. You'd have to turn to Bob Dylan to find someone else as inscrutably enigmatic.

And yet, just as he'd lead us down an abstruse path, past beast and bird and horseshoe crab, he'd turn and disarm us with his openness, with a hymn to the simple joys of life and love, and "good earthly music singing into my head". In this spirit he ended with an obscure Merle Haggard cover, Because Of Your Eyes, a jewel of a love song, pure and tender.

He left us united in devotion to our prince, for all his oddness and brilliance.