For those who haven’t been paying attention: William Loveday is actually British singer-songwriter, author, painter, photographer, filmmaker and eccentric Wild Billy Childish — an artist so prolific he makes Robert Pollard look like a lazy shit. And here’s the proof: Not one but two new releases arriving on the same damn day.
The Baptiser — his second album of 2022 and eighth full-length (by my count, anyway) in the past two years — is another magnificent mono batch of authentically vintage folk-rock balladry inspired by Dylan’s blisteringly brilliant late-’60s hot streak. The Zimmy doesn’t stop there: As the tongue-in-cheek title of New & Improved Bob Dylan Vol. 2 implies, it’s a collection of classic covers, revamped by the iconoclastic troubadour. Get ’em both. But make it quick: His next album Paralysed By The Mountains arrives in April.
THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “The Baptiser is the brand-new studio album by The William Loveday Intention! As part of an incredibly productive year by one of the world’s most productive and cherished artists, Billy Childish releases a new LP by The William Loveday Intention as part of his attempt at “a career in a year.”
“The Baptiser is titled after John The Baptiser, Christ’s teacher who proclaimed that you don’t need to make blood sacrifices in the temple of Jerusalem to have communion with God — it’s direct one to one in the desert, wearing a camel hair shirt and eating the fruits of the honey locust tree,” says Loveday. “The LP has many spiritual highs and blaming lows. It should move and sound like the contents of a thinking mind.”
