**1/2 Bonnie "Prince" Billy

I SEE A DARKNESS

(Palace Records)

He may have changed his name to Bonnie "Prince" (or, on one single, "Princ") Billy but he's still wilting Will Oldham, still sounding like a man propped up on his deathbed and issuing his final pensées in a weakened voice before tumbling into the void. The songs still alternate between the kind of arch allusiveness that can coax a creative interpretation from the willing listener ("Minor Place," "All Around") and all-too-clear meditations on how to extract a little existential satisfaction from a nihilistic universe ("Death to Everyone," "Today I Was an Evil One").

Either way, so pervasive is the feeling of a lassitude close to disease that when he sings, on "Another Day Full of Dread" (a title that, one suspects, is intentionally close to parody), "Well, I like to have a good time/Any of my friends will tell you," you think, ah, finally, a joke. The music continues in the relatively full-bodied, languid mode of '97's Joya -- none of those dead stops and Spartan "arrangements" that Palace favored, just a nice continuous sludge. Sink in if you feel so inclined.

-- Richard C. Walls