anticipate APOCALYPSE, the new bill callahan record

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!"