or better or worse, we here at Stylus, in all of our autocratic consumer-crit greed, are slaves to timeliness. A record over six months old is often discarded, deemed too old for publication, a relic in the internet age. That's why each week at Stylus, one writer takes a look at an album with the benefit of time. Whether it has been unjustly ignored, unfairly lauded, or misunderstood in some fundamental way, we aim with On Second Thought to provide a fresh look at albums that need it.

He called it an 'incredible moment'. Will Oldham had been wandering. He had cancelled his contract with his Hollywood agent, consigning to the past his brief acting career starring in such films as John Sayles’s Matewan. He enrolled at sailing school because he wanted to be a pirate and when he was out on the waters he suffered what he called a 'catatonic episode'. Oldham's life had filled up with a crippling dread. In the midst of this crisis his older brother Paul came to his parents' and asked, "Why don't you put a band together and play some of those Virginia songs?" It saved his life.

So whilst working in construction and masturbating like a maniac he began to write the music that would announce a new dark prince’s place in alternative music. Of course alternative is an entirely inappropriate word to use when you consider any Will Oldham songs. He's slowcore, sadcore, country, rock, folk, gothic, roots and indie. But then again he's not. The word alternative signals, however, the truth that he really does fulfill the generic rather than musical meaning of the word alternative, cut adrift from the mainstream and living on an island all his own. In 1993, his naked, fire and brimstone preacher hymns sounded the shocking but refreshing arrival of a voice still growing in 2003.

There is the fact that No One What Will Take Care of You sounds cheap. Probably because it cost $950 to record. But cheapness in Oldham's hands has a charm all of its own. ‘Idle Hands are the Devil's Playthings' opens. The portents aren't good, the bass sounds as if it's tuned too high, but its tripping banjo turns the song into something joyous. And of course, Oldham's voice comes to the fore. It's fragile. It's painful. But most of all he is already compulsive listening.

"Long Before" strikes a more mournful tone. It wanders almost aimlessly. Oldham's voice is in a permanent state of strain. The music accompanying it demands it. However it never fails to come from the pit of his blackened and decayed guts or the bottom of his craven heart, despite its failure to hit the high notes. But then the weakness of his voice plays perfectly to the song’s sentiments, as on all of There’s No One... It appears he can convince us better of his songs’ protagonist’s many failings by singing in a voice always poised to creak or croak, or even disappear.

Here he begins to have fun with the filthier moments, throwing out lines like "That virgin cunt, that seated whore, whose piss we have slept under". It is easy to imagine Oldham giggling to himself as he scribbles down the lyrics that he's always wanted to hear but never heard someone dare to utter. His parents had been "violent atheists" who worked up weird fucked up hymns with their progeny, all the religious iconography being secularised. Daddy played trumpet, mum the accordion, his sister the guitar. They all sang together. Obviously something had rubbed off.

You've got to love the guy for writing songs with titles like "I Tried to Stay Healthy for You". The song itself is almost a dead cert for Auld Lang Syne, causing you to sway smiling in tune, as Oldham juggles earnestness and jet black humour. You can envisage him dragging himself from bed, a bedraggled explosion of hair and stench, staring in the cracked mirror, vowing that just for one day he will keep on the road that goes straight and narrow, all in the name of love. That’s what I believe anyway.

But all of Oldham's music is an extended skit. He plays parts. He performs. His songs are not autobiographical. Or so he tells us. He has stated "the intention is always to create the hyper-real event so that, ideally, more people can relate to it". He's always the priest, the farmer, the miner, the builder, the man whose hands are bruised and covered in calluses and contusions from a hard day's labor. They are always the people who've gone wrong, who go to church every Sunday to beg forgiveness for their deviancy, drunken fools too blind to see the true errors of their ways. They are only human after all.

"Because I love my sister Lisa, I love my sister Lisa, I love my sister Lisa most of all" he sings on his incest saga “Riding” (which features the most nakedly malevolent Slint-like playing from Britt Walford and Brian McMahon of Louisville’s other cult musical delicacy ). So don’t take him literally. Otherwise you might feel too repulsed and sickened by the (mistaken) crossing of musician and autobiography (God forbid anyone would do that on a Will Oldham album). His use of earthy Old Testament language plants fierce emotions and fiery imagery in the imagination of the sort that is always rare in the musical pantheon. Look closer and it’s obvious his gift for words is even more astonishing, ("Keep our eyelids at half mast", "Let's take a match to this, my husband's house", “a threatening glow on her scarred corpse”, “I strove so to burn”).

But neither is the music as consistently dirty and depressing as the nerve jabbing lyrics might suggest, “O Lord are You in Need” is a wonderfully woozy song that sounds as if the band had gone on a Valium binge while “I Had a Good Mother and Father” uses slide guitar and Oldham spouting gibberish sounds to playful effect. The music is often the only thing that speaks happiness in the whole endeavour. The endsong is an ode, as mixed up and helpless as the rest of the record. The military drumbeat on ‘O Paul’ is juxtaposed with the loving and lilting guitar accompaniment. As a tribute to the brother who pulled him out of the mire, it's jokey, penetrating and adoring. It comes off as a warning shot crossed with a sweet lullaby.

Will Oldham is one of the best modern songwriters ... in spite of himself. He loves the possibility of contradiction, the flight from reality. He believes the further he takes us into the kingdom of the perverted and insane, the less we will see of the real Will Oldham. And he has concealed himself well enough to make interviewers despair of him to the present day.

Facile revisionism seems to overcome the music critic once a new album is delivered by an established artist. The urge is to say 'this is the best album yet' or that he 'gets better and better'. The impact of 'the new' seems to crush any sense of impartiality towards the older works, the truth being that it takes years and not a few days to gauge how good an album really is. There is No One... is a great album. The critics miss the point when they herald each new Oldham album as the best yet. Their shoddy criticisms diminish the reputation of his debut more every time, when the truth is the album has an original raw power that has been only be slightly attenuated with every new effort. It may not be the best Oldham album (I See a Darkness stands as his finest achievement), but it is the first giant step into the future and a crucial jump off point for the sound of his American Gothic. And when he is 60 or 80 he will still be performing these songs because his brand of storytelling is timeless: as evergreen as it is ever rotten. Oldham was, is and always will be the eternal old man rueing the follies of youth, middle age and life continuing. Not paying lip service to the demands of modernity or slavishly pursuing trends will serve him and his ever growing army of fans far better in the long run.