Bill Callahan | ||
| Allmusic Biography : After almost 20 years of using the alias Smog for his music, Bill Callahan switched to his given name for his releases after 2005s A River Aint Too Much to Love. The 2007 EP Diamond Dancer and full-length Woke on a Whaleheart both mixed the intimate, reflective, largely acoustic sound of later Smog albums like Supper and A River with gospel, soul, and pop elements, and boasted arrangements by former Royal Trux mastermind Neil Hagerty. For 2009s Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle, Callahan returned to the more intimate acoustic-based sound of latter-era Smog albums, featuring string and brass arrangements by Brian Beattie. The live album Rough Travel for a Rare Thing arrived in March 2010, and in July Callahan issued his 79-page "epistolary novelette" Letters to Emma Bowlcut, comprised of 62 letters from a nameless protagonist to a woman he saw at a party. Callahan kicked off 2011 with Apocalypse, a more uptempo collection of seven country- and blues-inspired rock tunes that recalled some of his edgier work with Smog. A softer offering, Dream River, was issued in the fall of 2013. The next year Have Fun with God surfaced, remixing the eight tracks of Dream River in more haunted and electronic styles. | ||
 | Album: 1 of 9 Title: Woke on a Whaleheart Released: 2007-04-24 Tracks: 9 Duration: 40:32 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 From the Rivers to the Ocean (06:35) 2 Footprints (02:47) 3 Diamond Dancer (04:00) 4 Sycamore (05:35) 5 The Wheel (04:03) 6 Honeymoon Child (04:39) 7 Day (04:32) 8 Night (03:04) 9 A Man Needs a Woman or a Man to Be a Man (05:13) |
| Woke on a Whaleheart : Allmusic album Review : Bill Callahan last graced us as (Smog) in 2005 with the graceful and utterly beautiful country drenched A River Aint Too Much to Love. A change was apparent when the Diamond Dancer EP appeared earlier in 2007 with its funky basslines and raggedy fiddle driving above a chorus of female backing vocalists. It was still him -- that voice is unmistakable -- but there was such a reliance on formal structure and texture, and on the notion of rhythm being placed right up front. It was almost funk and western. Callahan may have had a lo-fi aesthetic, and dug himself into it deeply, long before most had even toyed with it, but on Woke on a Whaleheart, he leaves most of that behind. The album starts innocuously enough with his rivers theme at the center "From Rivers to the Ocean." Folksy, languid, its almost pastoral as a piano holds the middle of mix and is juxtaposed with lazily strummed acoustic guitars tracing the limpid Americana surface as dulcimers and a trio of fiddles ease in from the margins. The poetry in his lyrics create a love song that is timeless and full of displacement. But the very next track, "Footprints," proves that the single was no mistake, strange R&B; tropes float into the basslines against the acoustic guitars strummed percussively and the ramped-up female backing vocals (all of them on this album are sung by Deani Pugh Flemmings), repeated lines, and Neil Michael Hagertys production notions, with fuzzed out guitars and repetitive yet primitive Motown-styled string arrangements. "Diamond Dancer" is next, underscoring this new, more soulful aesthetic that doesnt abandon Callahans deep love of old-style country music (as in country & western). The shimmeringly masculine and lyrically demented pop of "Sycamore" is another step out onto the ledge, underscoring that in many ways this is simultaneously the strangest and most accessible record weve had from the man yet. "The Wheel" sounds like it was recorded at a backyard singalong. Here is Neil Young meeting the dead spirit of Mississippi John Hurt as channeled by James Arness of Gunsmoke as carried through the voice of Callahan in the spirit of the Mekons. And so it goes until we enter the beautifully articulated clomp and clack ad Tennessee 2-step rhythm of "A Man Needs a Woman or a Man to Be a Man." Despite the appearance of that soul singing chorus, this is a 2-step country tune with all the trappings, moving from acoustic to electric, from shuffle to stomp and back until all that remains is rock & roll. Woke on a Whaleheart is a new phase for Bill Callahan; it employs all his strengths as a writer of lyrics and music and stretches the canvas of his colorful if sparsely arranged tapestry. | ||
 | Album: 2 of 9 Title: Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle Released: 2009-04-14 Tracks: 9 Duration: 48:10 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify TrackSamples Allmusic Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 Jim Cain (04:39) 2 Eid Ma Clack Shaw (04:19) 3 The Wind and the Dove (04:34) 4 Rococo Zephyr (05:42) 5 Too Many Birds (05:27) 6 My Friend (05:12) 7 All Thoughts Are Prey to Some Beast (05:52) 8 Invocation of Ratiocination (02:41) 9 Faith/Void (09:44) |
| Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle : Allmusic album Review : When Bill Callahan left behind his long held Smog moniker, he gave longtime fans of his lo-fi, mopey, sometimes angry aesthetic some real cause for worry: there was not only the name change, but the reliance on more technology that began with the Diamond Dancer EP and the outright lush production (compared to his past work) on Woke on a Whaleheart. Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle should give them some cause for relief, though the growth on the previous two offerings cannot be erased. There is no grand statement on Eagle; its merely the record that comes after Woke on a Whaleheart, but it feels more like a Smog record though it doesnt sound like one. This is the darkest, moodiest set hes issued since Supper in 2003, but its also easily his most accessible musically and sonically. We dont hear much more than Callahans idiosyncratic misanthropy offering itself speaking and breathing room on most of these tunes; his baritone is right up front and rarely gets stretched. His themes seem to center on flight and return, and are no better illustrated than on the opening cut, "Jim Cain," where, along a gently shuffling snare and kick drum, his nylon-string acoustic and electric guitars, and a cheap but effective keyboard, his ruminations are guided. They caress that voice out of its hiding place: "...Well I used to be darker/Then I got lighter, then I got dark again/Somethin to be seen, was passing over/And over me/Well it seemed like a routine case at first/With the death of the shadow, came the lightness of births/In the darkest of nights, the truth still dazzled/And I work myself, until Im frazzled/I ended up in search of ordinary things..." Its a cause célèbre for the album. So much here is written, scored for, and sung from, the place Callahan knows all too well, the outsider with the richest of interior lives with numerous motivations. Tracks like "My Friend" express, gently at first then more aggressively, sentiments that may be wholesome in their intent, but in their expression become more aggressive and even slightly sinister. While Callahans songs are characteristically simple: the way they are recorded is relatively more complex. Things are not so shambolic; they are carefully measured, tempered, and sequenced. Songs such as "All Thoughts Are Prey to Some Beast," are based on two-chord vamps, and Callahans voice does nothing to disguise itself as his lines are short, clipped, and shorn of unnecessary verbiage. But the sense of dynamic tension that gathers as violins, lithe, airy electric guitars playing single string leads, syncopated tom-toms, and synth lines that mimic French horns, offer a wider dimensions. Ultimately, this sense of circular motion, whether its flight and return, the human breath, birth, death, rebirth, loss, and love is the elemental construction of everyday life, and hence a lyrical cornerstone on Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle. It is perhaps a seminal new more accessible chapter in Callahans oeuvre of heretofore lo-fi, strictly outsider music. | ||
 | Album: 3 of 9 Title: Rough Travel for a Rare Thing Released: 2010-03-23 Tracks: 11 Duration: 1:09:41 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Our Anniversary (07:13) 2 Diamond Dancer (04:00) 3 Bowery (05:59) 4 Held (05:00) 5 Say Valley Maker (06:52) 6 In the Pines (05:51) 1 Cold-Blooded Old Times (05:38) 2 Rock Bottom Riser (07:10) 3 Let Me See the Colts (06:54) 4 The Well (09:05) 5 Bathysphere (05:59) |
 | Album: 4 of 9 Title: Apocalypse Released: 2011-04-05 Tracks: 7 Duration: 40:26 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify TrackSamples Allmusic Wikipedia AlbumCover | 1 Drover (05:24) 2 Babys Breath (05:30) 3 America! (05:33) 4 Universal Applicant (05:53) 5 Riding for the Feeling (06:05) 6 Frees (03:13) 7 One Fine Morning (08:45) |
| Apocalypse : Allmusic album Review : Those looking for a logical musical follow-up to Bill Callahans surprisingly accessible Sometimes I Wish I Were an Eagle from 2009 might scratch their heads at the sound on Apocalypse. The musical reference point in his catalog is, perhaps, A River Aint Too Much to Love, under the Smog moniker. Its not that this recording resembles that one musically, so much as it employs outsider takes on American roots traditions to get its seven songs across. Apocalypse is a song cycle that places the usually extremely inward-looking Callahan in the unlikely role of observer and interpreter of various American myths; myths both externally held and culturally self-referential, that inform the interior world of the protagonist. Recorded and mixed in Texas and adorned by Paul Ryans iconic painting Apocalypse at Mule Ears Peak, Big Bend National Park in West Texas, the album portrays America in all its complexity from the vantage point of an empathic yet wryly humorous narrator. On album-opener "Drover," Callahan plays a minor-key, two-chord vamp on a nylon-string guitar, offering a fragmented narrative on a cattle drive. Backed by a full-on rock band led by Matt Kinseys reverb-laden electric guitar, and colored by Gordon Butlers fiddle, it begs the question: do these cattle actually exist or are they metaphorical elements in the protagonists psyche? The chorus is the hint as it introduces a lovely second melody and turns the song back on the listener as Callahan sings: "One thing about this wild, wild country/It takes a strong, strong it breaks a strong, strong mind..." "Babys Breath" is more fractured and rockist, with a taut balance of acoustic and knife-edged electric guitars populating the musical space. Callahans protagonist found the right place, the right woman, and lost the latter. He has questions but no answers. "America" is the sets hinge piece. A repetitive, electric, pulsing, hypontic distorted blues--a la R.L. Burnside--that examines Americas mythical past and its tarnished present. Callahan name checks songwriting heroes -- Kris Kristofferson, Mickey Newbury, George Jones, and Johnny Cash -- by their actual ranks and branches in the armed forces while admitting hes never served, as if that might be the problem; then amid the din to make things more complex, he names our greatest national failures and dirty conquests. The albums most melodic and utterly beautiful song is the confessional waltz "Riding for the Feeling," with glistening electric piano and Wurlitzer played by Jonathan Meiburg. Closer "One Fine Morning" is a nearly nine-minute, lilting ballad that turns on a couple of chords, some pastoral yet jarring lyrics, and a gospel piano atop strummed guitars, which transmute the listener to another place and time. Apocalypse is a deceptively complex gem. | ||
 | Album: 5 of 9 Title: Dream River Released: 2013-09-17 Tracks: 8 Duration: 40:05 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify TrackSamples Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 The Sing (04:24) 2 Javelin Unlanding (03:49) 3 Small Plane (03:57) 4 Spring (05:11) 5 Ride My Arrow (05:04) 6 Summer Painter (06:31) 7 Seagull (05:39) 8 Winter Road (05:30) |
| Dream River : Allmusic album Review : After the urgent sound of 2011s Apocalypse, where Bill Callahan uncharacteristically turned his wry gaze outward to examine Americas physical, psychological, and cultural geographies, he returns to a more familiar interior landscape on Dream River. It too was recorded in Texas, features another cover painting by artist Paul Ryan, and guitarist Matt Kinsey is again ever present. Despite the sets more laid-back overall demeanor, something serpentine is at work. Americana certainly plays its role in the mix, but only as a frame. On the opener "The Sing," the narrator is in a hotel bar minimally observing in seeming non sequiturs its patrons, textures, and sounds, all as interior experiences. There is a country fiddle in the setting, but a syncopated mariachi rhythm -- thanks to Thor Harris claves -- dislocates the Southwestern melody, changing its shape in the refrain toward norteño, and in the bridge it moves again, ever so slightly, toward soul -- Callahan even namechecks Marvin Gaye to make sure we get it. The spacy electric guitars of "Spring" and Harris Latin beat on the congas are answered by Chojo Jaques improvising flute. (Think Neil Young accompanied by Ray Barretto and Jeremy Steig.) "Ride My Arrow" is in 6/8. It begins as an almost entirely acoustic ballad, but Jamie Zuverzas Wurlitzer, Harris congas, and Kinseys silvery electric guitar all contribute to a rising tension as they wind around one another, but the improvisation never quite explodes. "Seagull" is almost impressionistic save for its constant, laid-back rhythm. Its populated with an instrumental drift where space and indirect stylistic musical carry the skeletal melody. Callahans vocal addresses the impermanence of place and time as natural extensions of his person and the world, placing the listener in free fall. Throughout this album everything is taken gradually and either develops or doesnt. This is summed up on the gossamer Americana of the final track "Winter Road." Callahans simple, direct, interior reflections arent so much self-satisfied as they are minutely absorbed in the small, fleeting, magic of these moments as they add up and pass by. They barely exist long enough for him to get them down in lyric form (though theyve left a clear mark inside). Illustrating them musically already places them in another context, creating its own atmosphere of reverie in the listener. With Dream River, fans already know what to expect from the man lyrically, and it cant be argued with qualitatively. When you place those lyrics in the context of something so subtly adventurous musically, the result is both engaging and seductive. | ||
 | Album: 6 of 9 Title: Have Fun With God Released: 2014-01-21 Tracks: 8 Duration: 40:21 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify AlbumCover | 1 Thank Dub (04:27) 2 Expanding Dub (03:37) 3 Small Dub (04:01) 4 Call It Dub (05:15) 5 Ride My Dub (05:08) 6 Summer Dub (06:27) 7 Transforming Dub (05:49) 8 Highs in the Mid-40s Dub (05:37) |
 | Album: 7 of 9 Title: Apocalypse: A Bill Callahan Tour Film by Hanly Banks Released: 2016-11-25 Tracks: 3 Duration: 29:16 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% AlbumCover | 1 One Fine Morning (11:39) 2 Universal Applicant (10:19) 3 America (07:18) |
 | Album: 8 of 9 Title: Live at Third Man Records Released: 2018-11 Tracks: 6 Duration: 43:19 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% AlbumCover | 1 Spring (07:18) 2 Jim Cain (05:09) 3 Ride My Arrow (06:02) 4 One Fine Morning (10:15) 5 Drover (07:31) 6 Riding for the Feeling (07:02) |
 | Album: 9 of 9 Title: Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest Released: 2019-06-14 Tracks: 20 Duration: 1:03:35 Scroll: Up Down Top Bottom 25% 50% 75% Spotify TrackSamples Allmusic AlbumCover | 1 Shepherds Welcome (02:22) 2 Black Dog on the Beach (02:30) 3 Angela (02:47) 4 The Ballad of the Hulk (04:04) 5 Writing (03:06) 6 Morning Is My Godmother (02:10) 7 747 (03:26) 8 Watch Me Get Married (03:10) 9 Young Icarus (02:48) 10 Released (02:22) 11 What Comes After Certainty (03:42) 1 Confederate Jasmine (03:40) 2 Call Me Anything (02:26) 3 Son of the Sea (04:13) 4 Camels (02:59) 5 Circles (02:28) 6 When We Let Go (02:17) 7 Lonesome Valley (04:16) 8 Tugboats and Tumbleweeds (04:12) 9 The Beast (04:37) |