Will Oldham finds a partner for his rhymes

Superwolf is only a name, and just the latest one adopted by Bonnie “Prince” Billy (real name: Will Oldham, aka Palace Music, Palace Brothers, etc.). This time, it’s for a new act with guitarist Matt Sweeney, the shifting names and identities suggesting it’s only the music that matters.

Of course, it all matters, and Superwolf is a further extension of Oldham’s gentle, surreal folk music. At McCabe’s on Sunday, he sang in the same rough, quivering tenor, reciting lyrics that were dreamy, downcast and searching: “Tears are for falling ... kisses are for faking.”

The words were by Oldham, the music by Sweeney, drawing on the grittiest of old-timey folk and an indie-rock state of mind. Oldham’s idiosyncratic sound resides comfortably below the mainstream radar and is obscure even to many underground circles, but respected enough that Johnny Cash recorded a version of Oldham’s “I See Darkness” on his final album.

On Superwolf’s new debut album, “Superwolf,” songs enjoy arrangements that are elegant and spare, while onstage Oldham and Sweeney seemed scattershot and sketchy, either by design or temperament. That held its own charms, but robbed some songs of immediacy.

During nearly two hours at McCabe’s, Superwolf seemed like a true partnership, with Oldham at the center, rethinking and reworking the songs to his whims of the moment, as Sweeney added nice layers of electric guitar and harmony vocals. Casual, haunted and inspired, Superwolf is a name worth remembering.