anticipate APOCALYPSE, the new bill callahan record

Apocalypse is a seven-song set that was recorded live in the studio. Apparently, the collection features raw, off-the-floor takes with “No cuts! Delectables and guts!”

The western theme runs whole hog in the press release, describing the ol’ timey ways in which Callahan crafted the album.

“Callahan, riding on the back of his band, corrals them all and guides them single-handedly through the Valley with love and ferocity,” it says of his new tunes.

A canyon-travelling album, Apocalypse rounds up a number of cuts that speak of days long past, and will have you wondering, “What has really happened in the last 100 years.” Sounds kind of rustic.

Apocalypse tracklisting:

1. “Drover”
2. “Baby’s Breath”
3. “America!”
4. “Universal Applicant”
5. “Riding For The Feeling”
6. “Free’s”
7. “One Fine Morning”

3. “America!”

*registers anticipation*

i think it should be anticipated in a big way. i did that with whaleheart, picked it up on release day and took it back to the store the day later ("oh bill", i said, despondent), although i like it now.

kinda wish the record was called riding for the feeling

Yes, I am looking forward to this.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lhux4vWeNj1qdzqjso1_400.jpg

at this point I pretty much leave a spot on the year-end list for Callahan as soon as I hear he's going to release an album

i am not so much a 'lyrics guy' but i think i would buy bill callahan lps, now, just to see where he's at. i remember after woke on a whaleheart had been going around and around awhile, hearing to family is all you can do. like it's genuinely going to assist my day to day life to have this kind of thing to listen to for reference.

at this point I pretty much leave a spot on the year-end list for Callahan as soon as I hear he's going to release an album

― five gone cats from Boston (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, March 10, 2011 3:35 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark

me too

new song!

http://downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Bill%20Callahan%20-%20Baby%27s%20Breath.mp3

not sure about that track.

i like it! it grows as it goes on. it actually kinda reminded me of recent joanna newsom stuff, in some of its slight detours, the way it holds together. i heard the first side of this record; the sound is sorta akin to that santa maria cover he did a while back. it has some of the stomp he has when you see him play, maybe compared to the composure of the last record.

i can definitely see that it may click for me at some point.

i've only heard it sort of in passing but it unfurls. the buzzy, loose, electric-guitar-slingin' setup suits him pretty well. only downside is the approach to songform seems weirdly uninquisative on first listen.

I like it too! It's loose in terms of guitar playing and structure, and there are quite some nice sounding things going on in the background that I haven't identified yet.

this leaked. am psyched. will buy.

btw that's a marmot in the background

feelin this

(only half way thru so far)

I am LOVING "America!"

i watched david letterman. in australia

Captain Kristofferson
Buck Sergeant Newbury
Leatherneck Jones
Sergeant Cash

What an Army
What an Air Force
What a Marines
America!

that song sounds like filler to me.

kind of funny though

Do you mean judging only by the lyrics? Have you heard the song? Because it's really great and unlike anything Callahan has done. Not filler at all. It's got this propulsive guitar / rhythm thing that makes it sound like it was produced by The Bomb Squad.

don't really know if i'm into this album :( i love callahan but every once in a while he puts out an album that just leaves me cold, and i think this might be one of those. still can't get into "woke on a whaleheart" at all either. though i didn't like "rain on lens" at first and it grew on me eventually so maybe this one will just take time.

i still have never really taken to 'rain on lens' although i did eventually go back and realize it wasn't awful like i thought. i liked 'whaleheart' way better than 'eagle' but i'm happy to wait on the latter.

totally agree with n/a esp. on the rain on lens U-turn. i'm actually totally gutted that i don't love this. the tack i like most is "Riding for the Feeling" which is the one that sounds like it could have fit most comfortably on "...An Eagle". i wasn't looking for a re-run of that album, though, i was excited by the title and actually anticipating something a bit MORE different.

so this callahan is coming out 5 April now, right?

It's out now, on CD, with the LP to follow in a few weeks. Release got brought forward because it leaked.

Do you mean judging only by the lyrics? Have you heard the song?

dude i heard the album. "america" just seems kind of a half-assed, a few good jokes and that's it. it doesn't develop (lyrically or musically).

i still can't really get into rain on lens but supper, which a lot of folks seem to have slept on, is his best IMO.

+ it doesn't sound anything like the bomb squad. it sounds like something from knock knock, though.

i still can't really get into rain on lens but supper, which a lot of folks seem to have slept on, is his best IMO.

supper is him at the top of his game imo. so tightly controlled.
i just listenened to the first side of this, to preserve some suspense for getting the LP, & get the knock knock thing - like america as no dancing or whatever. i'm still super excited, ilx ambivalence forthcoming. jed: it's been a bad year for you!, underwhelming weerasethakul & smog.

"Supper" is definitely one of the best. My favorites of his albums are the ones that exude warmth, I don't really know how else to describe it. Supper, A River Ain't Too Much to Love, and Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle are the big three in terms of warmth for me. Though with Supper part of it might just be the nice red-orange album cover.

listened to Supper again this morning and it's one of his funniest albums. it has lots of jokes.

one of my favorite bill callahan lines is "i never use doors no mores"

all his albums have a mix of warmth and ironic detachment, no? -- that's one thing that makes him interesting. that said, i know what you mean about e.g. "feather by feather" and "guiding light."

some of recent songs that are nominally inspirational or sincere are so straightforwardly platitudinous that you have to imagine he's taking the piss a little bit. he's very hard to "read" though...

also is this his prog album or something? seven songs, averaging almost six minutes!

i never use doors no mores"

my favourite on that is the following line, "i never use stairs, just trees" which is a v vivid image and amusingly ridiculous. are you talking about woke on a whaleheart with the "straightforwardly platitudinous" thing? i remember a quasi-religious theme on that record which stuck in my craw a bit although i don't know that album well enough to go into any detail and, in fact, i don't think i'll ever return to it. i thought the faux-country thing he was doing there was direction at the time of the name change which is why "... and eagle" was such a surprise. i should have know well enough that he doesn't do "directions", i could fully see him making another dour and angry record like "rain on lens" soon.

yeah there are a bunch of those songs on whaleheart but some on eagle as well, no? and on river.

i don't think i'd ever heard a bill callahan song before, but i just heard "baby's breath" and it's great. i like how it gives the impression of looseness, with all the little time & feel changes, but it's still really well-produced & arranged.

then i listened to a couple songs from his previous record and they didn't grab me the same way (honestly i didn't give them much of a chance though).

Apocalypse seems a lot looser in general than his other recent albums, but if you like "Baby's Breath" you might like the rest of it

just now listening to this (totally behind, i know!): http://3voor12.vpro.nl/speler/luisterpaal/44622033#luisterpaal.44622033
sounds really good! i like the loose vibe. "free's" kinda sounds like van morrison!

also is this his prog album or something? seven songs, averaging almost six minutes!

j. newsom influence finally showing itself in the world.

http://eagleflieswiththedove.tumblr.com/post/4064333234/bill-callahan-smog-animal-concordance-2011-edition

missed the lion in Eid Ma Clack Shaw

Listening to this now and enjoying it. I like that he's getting more dynamic with each release.

anyone read the SFJ article?

yeah i thought it was pretty eh

seemed weird to mention Fred Neil and Merle Haggard as references but not Leonard Cohen? trying to keep it all american i guess.

agree with the resonant frequency article on pfork that this album sounds amazing.

re sfj, it's true that sometimes you can hear the relevance of his chest to his voice, i think.

one of the things that strikes me more and more as one of callahan's market-leader-virtues, a thing that he's the best at, is his timing; it seems like a genuine awareness of the form that you can play around with momentary gaps and hesitations, the modifying effect they have on how we receive what he's saying; in are you still tight/with that pharmacist on supper; the long reveal of the heartbeat line on the last record, and* pitching a line in baby's breath to young girl/at the wedding, when the song's baggage maybe suggests that saying young girl would be very specific and referential without the second half of that line. i know poetry isn't just for the page but it feels like part of what's good & what's skilled about him isn't his words as-read, but how he's sending them at you.

(* i wouldn't ordinarily dip into the sorta biographical/tabloid concerns of this sorta thing, but the hypothesised relationship between baby birch & j-new & baby's breath & the weed/flower metaphors is kinda fascinating & multi-dimensional imo)

i think you can find discussion of that point on one of the old smog threads. the timing, i mean.

the thing about that sfj article is that he chooses songs, and quotes at some length from lyrics, that i don't find all that interesting. he chooses the lyrics that have some definite and fairly transparent meaning and are funny or clever in some way (or are about music, like the shout outs to singers on "america!") but i'm more interested in a lyric like (e.g)"i started running/ and the concrete turned to sand" which are more mysterious and evocative to me. and, moreover, it just seems like he doesn't "get it". certainly not if he thinks this is bill's best record.

and when he quotes the lyrics he does quote i can imagine they just seem very flat and uninteresting written down.

the thing about that sfj article is that he chooses songs, and quotes at some length from lyrics, that i don't find all that interesting.

Yeah, and he's less interested in Callahan's great timing.

I don't love this album like its predecessor; the only ones I still return to are "Baby's Breath" and "Riding For the Feeling." But I'll keep trying.

i'm pleased to say i'm getting into this.

"my cattle
tss-tss"

love that bit in Drover. tss-tss...

'still'??

good interview - http://therumpus.net/2011/04/the-rumpus-interview-with-bill-callahan/

The styles are converging in the present day, also, but in a more clinical or unloving way. The current music is mostly like a doctor’s visit. Where you check off the questionnaire about the past and hope they don’t stick a finger up your butt.

that is great.

Callahan: I’ve been listening to Marvin Gaye. ‘What’s Going On’ and ‘Here, My Dear’ albums. They have a density and an insularity that I like. In that way that you can push insularity to the point of it being so wide open and close. I’m not sure if the mixes are right, I’m still analyzing that. Too much reverb. I might need to do a remix.

also the part about politics.

It can be hard to comprehend but playing a show is like knocking down a city and building a new one in the space of an hour or two. You first need to knock down the city the audience has built while waiting for you. Because they don’t really want to be in that city they built, they just didn’t know what else to do with their minds while waiting. Then you build them a city.

absolutely superb but i wish she had followed up on some of his points. i want to know more about baby's breath being a series of alternate endings.

It can be hard to comprehend but playing a show is like knocking down a city and building a new one in the space of an hour or two. You first need to knock down the city the audience has built while waiting for you. Because they don’t really want to be in that city they built, they just didn’t know what else to do with their minds while waiting. Then you build them a city.

I can imagine all the pauses he'd inject were he singing these as lyrics.

the poetry response is hysterical. obv he can be very funny but he's downright kooky a lot of the time here.

i think i like interviews that, job interview style, suffix thoughts & subjects with, talk about this.

yeah one fine morning
yeah its all coming back to me now
my apocalypse my apocalypse

i love this bit ^

has anyone caught any shows on the tour?

i saw him last night and was just blown away. it was one of those shows when you're subconsciously chastising people you know for not having been there to see it. his group are pretty much perfect - neal morgan drumming inventively & a guy i don't know playing alternately neat and messy guitar. a couple of older things had some nuance lost in the swampiness, but otherwise everything was totally sympathetic and measured, given the appropriate angles and turns. and hearing him sing!, like, i read the SFJ thing and i think having heard his voice change LP by LP hadn't really noticed that it had gotten so deep, but it's a huge part of what he is about now: that there's this huge authority to what he's intoning, word by word, and that it's then suddenly steered or changed by his inflections and melodies and lifts and growls.

really booming bathysphere also, which i ordinarily hope he won't play having seen it a bunch of times, with wild ad-lib lyrics, one line, "my father is a pork chop". just go see him.

I was there last night! Thought it was amazing, you've said everything I thought. Great venue too, never been there before.

oh neat! i wonder who you are (were you the tall guy with a beard, lol). it was nice there; i was kinda near the front so the venue/my periphery was just full-of-smog, but it was a nice hall, sure. i'm broke but tempted by low next week. bummed to have missed group doueh the same night though.

i kinda-liked sophia knapp, too. she had this breezy LA FM radio vibe, like it was the kind of thing you wish would play on the radio if you drove interstate through the night. halfway between the chromatics & fleetwood mac. it sounded like what the girl on night drive would be listening to on her night drive if she wasn't listening to night drive.

but yeah bill was great. someone online said he looked like he was enjoying himself in his own way, & i think that's right - he was on such good form. doing the kinda cowboy-ish stuff off'f the new one makes him such a badass.

sounds great, i'm going to see him in july. the record, especially side one, is really doing it for me.

I was fairly near the front too, on the side of the stage by the drummer (who was amazing).

I like the way he does a little horsey trot during Eid Ma Clack Shaw.

nate we were so close

was just listening to this...so good! sometimes all that's left to do on album is sing the catalog number. deeee ceeee four five ohhhh.

and glad the live show is shaping up...he's coming to my area in june, will definitely buy a ticket.

I like the way he does a little horsey trot during Eid Ma Clack Shaw.

don't get me wrong, i love bill but this sounds like some twee sufjan stevens ish. anyway.. missed him in austin a week or two ago. would've liked to see him do the new album tunes, love it front to back, mostly. but i've seen him plenty over the years.

Is the new drummer better than Thor?? Find that hard to believe. Thor rules.

Love this album. Bill 4eva

don't get me wrong, i love bill but this sounds like some twee sufjan stevens ish

it's just treading on the spot, it wasn't like a stageshow or anything.

drummer creams thor imo but i realise that i am going to have trouble persuading people that there is a better drummer than a guy called thor. just so light at the right times and so full on at others, both of these exemplified by america!

saw Thor with Swans a couple months back, dude is fucking immense

Thor's twitter is fucking hilarious fwiw

so this is an uneven record...but 'drover' and 'riding for the feeling' would be in my callahan POX

yup, those are my two keepers from the record, both A+ tunes

I'd include "Baby's Breath" too.

Drover and Baby's Breath are my favorites. I like America! for LOLs and Riding For The Feeling is pretty good. But yeah, so far the rest seems pretty indistintct to me.

universal applicant is probably my favorite, along with drover

For some reason that one just hasn't clicked for me yet.

did anyone read the wire review of this record! total pan -- and an ILX diss? something about how will oldham and callahan should have their credentials revoked & be banished along with iron and wine and bright eyes(!? lol) to ILX. kind of a surprisingly clueless review for the wire imo.

Perhaps, it's time to revoke the canonical status of persistent underachievers such as Callahan and Will Oldham (don't even get me started on Iron & Wine and Bright Eyes) and banish them to ILX for good, diverting our attention more fulsomely towards artists with genuinely inquisitive approaches to traditional songform, whether this means James Blake and Jamie Woon or Alex Tucker and Richard Youngs.

I don't think he's associated iron & wine / bright eyes w/ ilx, just callahan and oldman

still an idiot obv

ah, right. yeah, the whole review was fairly dumb.

yeah it was talked abt in the wire thread iirc

Link?

schlump, i saw him a few weeks ago in glasgow. probably the best i've ever seen him perform. i can't get over just how good his voice sounds these days. the drummer was absolutely fantastic too, i agree, very creative and unique; sometimes very spare, sometimes extremely intense. full marks to that guy.

i like this album a lot now which is pretty much the first time i've changed my mind about one of his records.

artists with genuinely inquisitive approaches to traditional songform, whether this means James Blake and Jamie Woon

james blake's "songs" are utterly pitiful. jamie woon's album is one of my favourite records for a long time, he's great (i think he's going to be huge)... but his approach to "songform" is much more traditional and generic than bill callahan's.

schlump, i saw him a few weeks ago in glasgow. probably the best i've ever seen him perform. i can't get over just how good his voice sounds these days. the drummer was absolutely fantastic too, i agree, very creative and unique; sometimes very spare, sometimes extremely intense. full marks to that guy.

yeah: i think i said somewhere, the thing about his voice being this deep wondrous thing really snuck up on me, & i wouldn't have noticed a concerted change over the past ten years without someone drawing attention to it (i guess i always listen to the newest one?, i don't know). but seeing him sing, this time around, holding the room with a stare and intoning: yeah. one of the things that is maybe me getting too deep, about smog, or more particularly about the branded bill callahan records (& a river), is the kind of baggage that goes with them, with the fact that you're listening to something that's this mix of v talkative, v expressive and yet v open-ended and ambiguous material, all of which winds through the small things that represent bigger, life stuff, like animals etc. i have sometimes caught myself in moments of communion aware that there's this thing that i guess people got from johnny cash, and that is tangled up in manhood and masculinity and the role you're filling when you align yourself with a guy-telling-truths-about-livin', etc. just: his voice is so authoritative, and imbues what he's saying with a feeling of truth, and it's so perfectly coupled with what he's singing about, now. it makes me feel like the guys who'd dig early 2000s popular metal who would permit themselves to cry when they heard one of the withered acoustic slow-jams that the groups would put out. or like the old guy in the background of that townes van zandt waiting around to die clip.

the drummer, i was thinking about the conversation that went on upthread a while ago and trying to hone in on what made neal morgan so preferable to thor, to me. i wonder if it's a timing thing, again; like i associate thor with the smog stuff on whaleheart that pounds and rolls and stomps, that has the kinda (not pejoratively) 'leaden' kick-drum-heavy smog drumming that some people hate. and what was neat about NM was that it was so peppery & not locked down and was complementing what he was saying line for line (kinda like michael stuart, maybe, on laughing stock). just real intuitive & instep with the fact that when you see smog play you're watching lines unfurl one after the next.

i haven't heard the jamie woon LP, you make me wanna!
& as for spinning around on apocalypse!, i think while it does sorta split into the batches people have flagged up above - like the more song-y ones and then the slightly less focused stuff on side two, i'd feel rushed trying to judge it now because it takes me a while to get a handle on where he's going and what he's talking about. side two maybe suffers from the fact that the songs on the first side are fully formed and direct (reading baby's breath as an extended metaphor is still slaying me), and that isn't really what he's shooting for on the looser stuff.

quickly, as i'm listening to it right now, i have to say that

oh the lucky suckle teat
others chaw pig knuckle meat

is pretty damn impressive.

&

Rumpus: Do you read much poetry?
Callahan:I’m not a poetry guy. I don’t understand most of it... I don’t want to be teased with feathers by someone tittering in a harlequin mask hiding behind a pillar

but "Universal Applicant" is as dense and puzzling as most of the poetry i've read. i mean that as a compliment.

i'm pretty sure he reads some poetry, in fact i've heard him talk about it. bill be playin. actually his lyrics have a lot of affinities with lots of modern blank verse. to the point where i could imagine him having gone to the iowa writers program or something. not a criticism or a compliment, just an observation.

lol @ the reviewer thinking he sounds smarter using the compound word "songform." also what's so traditional about callahan? or are all "songs" traditional to this dude?
although this new LP isn't bill's best he is incredibly inventive in lots of subtle and not-so-subtle ways. listen to his singing! he is an incredible singer.
also i doubt there's more bill love on ILX than anywhere else on the interwebs. he's a popular dude.

iirc there was a recent interview in which he got asked about poetry & was all, i like that white donkeys guy!, unsure if tate was poetry or not. i don't have any hesitation in calling bill a poet, but for knowing that he is more prominently the thing he is*; taking the words alone strips them of the delivery that adds a whole other layer.

who constitutes modern blank verse, amateurist? i would love tips on this.

* none of the words for this are appealing, obviously, 'singer-songwriter' & all.

this is a good wednesday record

ok, i will put it on tonight then. i haven't listened to it yet. callahan's voice is a wondrous thing indeed. but sometimes it grates as it is too much. did he do something to his voice or is his bass natural? is he a smoker maybe?

affirmative callahan is a smoker, godspeed on your way to a surefire baritone

sometimes his vocals in live performance can get too arch, but that doesn't happen too often on record.

amazing show last night in denver, my first time seeing him. almost a two hour set! he really is a great performer, something i wasn't totally expecting. commands the stage! even took requests during the encore, and closed with mine, "Sycamore". beautiful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uaN0y8YWTM

chicago show asshole otm, smog otm, drummer otm

show in brooklyn the other night was awesome. favorite bit was during the well when there was a pause and he said "i forget the next line" an audience member screamed out a lyric and bill replied "no that comes later" Then later in the song, while the band was still plugging away, he commented that the song was "taking forever tonight"

dude's voice is arresting and kinda transfixing. band was hot too, has that guy played guitar on any of his albums?

Matt Kinsey was his name and he was shit-hot, on some intergalactic swamp twang tone. Joanna Newsom's drummer (whose name escapes me) was behind the kit. such nuanced stellar playing from them and a great show.

yeah his band was great -- who needs a bass player! Callahan was better than I expected on classical guitar too.

yeah the nasty tone his guitarist was pulling off was great. sort of a classic rock thing.

sort of a classic rock thing.

totally. totally a part of the record, too, that kinda longing slightly wailing guitar, the electric part on riding for the feeling.

his show in boston the other night was fantastic. it restored my interest in going to see shows—not one iPhone in the air, nobody texting, the sound was perfect. his music is so wonderfully minimal and full of intention... stoic... transfixing is a good word.

yeah, even though you could probably describe callahan's stage presence as "aloof," it sort of works for him -- like he sets the right tone for the live show. I had close to the same experience (maybe a few iphones) in Denver -- packed crowd, but really quiet and into it.

it restored my interest in going to see shows

yeah: like there is something about it that so resembles the platonic idea of going to see like, lol, a songstrel play his songs, rather than your favourite musician possibly play one of your favourite of his songs. you're really listening, rather than remembering or tracking or appreciating or anticipating. there's a video on some site of him playing one fine morning in front of a crowd, & you can see it ringing out better than it does on the lp, because it's hitting people one line at a time - i can't explain it but the way it's unfolding feels so charged & ephemeral, seeing him.

^ yes, well put.

he's always been like that. i remember a show ca. 1997–8, he actually showed up early (wtf) and was drinking at the bar, looking into space w/ a 100-yard stare. nobody dared approach him.

"like that" -- aloof, stoic, whatever

just makes his droll humor stand out. at the show a few weeks ago, when one sort of embarrasingly overenthusiastic dancer dude stopped to relax/get a beer, and another dude started doing something similar, bill just said, "looks like we're at a shift change."

lol

XP: at both of those stories!

makin' me regret not going to the show he's playing here tonight but MONEY Y'ALL

that aloofness is why i thought it was weird he asked for requests, and then embarrassed when people were shrieking out song names. he doesn't seem like someone who should take requests.'][[[[[[[[[[iiii

sorry my daughter typed that last part.

heard a story about an old show when people were hollering for requests, he'd been silent all night & then stepped up to the mic to say:

is anyone willing
to die
for their request

that's the best concert banter i've ever heard

i feel like callahan's the sort of ornery dude who'd ask for requests and then systematically ignore all of them.

i laughed every time he said "I Thank You" at the show. classic.
but where DID that guitarist come from anyway?

i think i wrote this on another thread, but after he asked for requests and people were screaming song titles for a couple of minutes, he said "i'm glad you guys don't write the set list."

his funny comment at my show was: "I haven't played here in many years ... but I thought about you ... the whole time I was gone."

he should do a comedy album.

"take my cryptic poeticism ... please!"

Oh yeah, so like I said on the other thread I realized this album is amazing. I actually bought it mainly because the record store clerk was cute and playing it, but it's amazing.

would smog clerk

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/650397224/apocalypse-a-bill-callahan-tour-film

Anyone else pledge? Seems an unlikely subject for a tour film, Bill being famously reticent and all, but what do I know? I just wish there was an actual, you know, DVD. Ah well. I pledged for the mix CD. That's gonna be awesome.

http://americansongbook.org/pdfs/2012/AS-2012-02-08-Callahan.pdf

lol @ Thursday, February 9, at 8:30
tUnE-yArDs

ha that program is classic

So that concert film/road doc is finished. Saw it in Baltimore this past weekend with the director and Bill in attendance. It was quite good! She caught some beautiful footage. Bill played a nice short little set after the screening. I’m assuming there will be a DVD/BluRay release at some point in the not-do-distant future.

#217 of my 1,000 favorite moments on this record:

that quiet, brief laugh he does at 3:56 in "universal applicant" ---- "the flare burned and fell / the boat burned as well, hm!"

bees only swarm when they're looking for a home
...and so i followed them!

#218

"to be free in bad times... and good"

IF this record has 1000 moments, Eagle has 100,000.

Both Eagle and Apocalypse are favourites of mine but out of the two, I prefer the latter - more consistently excellent and for me the lyrics are the best Callahan has ever wrote.

this was the performance that convinced me that "america!" is the highlight, not the goofy outlier, of this album:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwaiE9nZWCk

incredible record and cannae wait for the new one

ne too but i hope it will be better than Apocalypse

nobody does not hope that but we can still be fond of apocalypse all the same

waking up tremulously anxious to hear this every day btw

Apocalypse is his best album.

that's going a little far but there's absolutely nothing wrong w/it

it's not one of my fave callahans but seeing him live on this circuit helped me appreciate it more

i do not generally care for, or at least don't automatically prioritise, shows, but he does something so special, live, i think, like it plays to a strand of his music, to do with timing & tension, that makes it even more itself, in a kinda extra-dimensional way. it becomes ... ultra-smog.

yeah - and more simply for me, you notice how good a guitarist he is, how much he's doing in those economical little turnarounds

it is interesting seeing the new song to know it's another of his kinda woven into a simple, rolling line, like it has the DNA of to be of use or all thoughts are pray to some beast. I think there was definitely a moment (like around a river?) when he seemed to step up & sorta click more with what a guitar could do propulsively, how it could be momentum for him to sing with or else play against, pitching his hesitation against its flow on the well or whatever. I'm curious to hear the arrangements for the new record (which I hear are pretty jazzy/loose), because I generally can't neatly assign a register or style he's working in , now - that he is amid this kinda syrupy late flowering, & playing with these sorta austere & delicate classical sounds seems to mean people are calling him glen campbell or picking up on his mickey newman affection, but it isn't that, to me. I feel like he's doing everything very minimally & then dressing it up well.

he's always been kind of a minimalist, arrangement-wise, and he's always been good live with these kind of steady vamps whose dynamics shift in subtle ways. i've admired this about his live shows since... probably the red apple falls era. he's just got better since.

"it is interesting seeing the new song to know it's another of his kinda woven into a simple, rolling line"

you mean the song he played live in the NYC park?

i'm not sure it will sound the same on the record. maybe it won't be as simple.

no, sure. but that it's a reducible, cyclic thing, though, right? i was trying to find an old youtube of him playing all thoughts, solo, the same kinda thing, & can't. i'm sure it'll be dressier on the record, but i think he is doing something kinda structurally minimal anyway.

yea i'm really excited about this new record. i don't know why but i'm imagining it to maybe be like the looser stuff on apocalypse (e.g. universal applicant or free's), perhaps b/c as schlump said there is some talk about the arrangements being a little jazzy/loose.

anyways i generally do fall into the camp that apocalypse is his best record so far. definitely his most consistent. and i've totally gone to appreciate "america" is a great feature of this album. not the highlight, for me that would probably be "one fine morning." but i really have a hard time picking the highlight because as i mentioned upthread this album has 1000 moments of brilliance and is all around just spectacular

i hope it WON'T be like Free's or Universal Applicant. i'll abandon the ship if that will be the case.
(i hope it will be his Aja lol!)

riding for the feeling is my personal highlight of Apocalypse, (maybe because it sounds like an Eagle track, which i adore)

riding for the feeling is wonderful

the song or the act itself?

Still sounds wonderful to me:

http://devonrecordclub.com/2014/09/20/bill-callahan-apocalypse-round-71-toms-selection/

I made a YouTube playlist of every live performance of "America!" I could find: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR4bkk16IAsi9_3BnQVB-SKtU956b5rsU

The first video is from a show I was at.

I don't really know why I did this, except that seeing the song performed live really opened it up for me. The album version is great but it's so heavy live.

you should make a supercut of every time he speak-sings "Leatherneck Jones"

What if Jenny Hval's "Apocalypse, girl" was a response album to this one

DC 450 oh, oh

This was a perfect soundtrack to washing up this evening.

I'm not sure of the meaning of "America", though. (I can't quite untangle the possibly dry humour).

I always took it as weighing the speaker's homesickness and affection for some aspects of American culture against the speaker's knowledge of the historical complicity of white Americans with genocide and imperialism, not really advancing an argument so much as exploring that affective dissonance.

i thought he was just being a smug child of privilege, bragging about chilling ironically carefree indie rock star style in australia, while you sad fucks have to get up and go to work LOL

And when my cattle turned on me, I was knocked. back. flat.
I was knocked out cold for one clack of the train track.
Then I rose, a colossal hand buried, buried in sand.
I rose like a drover.
For I am, in the end, a drover.