bill callahan (post-smog)

otm

Gil Scott-Heron covers I'm New Here. i don't know what to make of it but it is... something.

http://www.kcrw.com/music/programs/tu/tu100308gil_scott-heron_im_n?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed:%20kcrw/tu%20%28Today%27s%20Top%20Tune%29&utm_term=Todays%20Top%20Tune

"how can something be in any empty box?"

love this dude so much. hilarious.

lyrics on supper are so sharp and tense and funny and kinda hot throughout

All this talk about Supper makes me want to check it out. It may be the only Smog record I don't own. Just haven't got around to it. My favorite Callahan/Smog record is the one I heard first - Knock Knock.

supper is my fave; i am not a big listmaker but it's one of my favourite things that existed in the last ten years.

knock knock is kinda uneven to me; some of the best songs are on there but the slow loren connors jam and the weird no dancing upbeat stuff make it kind of too broad i think.

yeah, the lyrics from supper are fantastic. probably my favorite album as well.

a friend of mine at the time (who was a big smog fan) felt that he was moving into a too-elliptical and -obscurantist direction, but i actually don't think this is the case w/ supper. my friend cited the song butterflies drowned in wine. but that's a really easy to understand and evocative and inventive mashup of two metaphors (butterflies in the stomach/drowning your troubles in alcohol). i think in the last two albums he can maybe be accused of being opaque but i still love him.

i know it's a cliche but i can't think of a better contemporary lyricist. the guy from drive-by truckers is pretty good though their music isn't particular to my tastes.

Robert Forster's better with tunes.

And he's a Callahan fan too.

you know, i haven't heard any of forster's recent (meaning past 15 years?) stuff. i'm not a huge go-betweens fan though i do like them. always found something a little too..emphatic around the edges about them for my taste. don't know if i could explain it better. both forster and mcclennan obviously wrote some deathless songs.

not sure how to express this, but although i actually think bill's more of a melodist than he often gets credit for being, i don't think the charm of music is principally about novel or tricky 'tunes'. i mean, the 'hooks' in his songs are often in his wry, often very very funny delivery. he tends to use variations on sort of stock, public-domain-type melodies; and typically his inventiveness comes in terms of the way he varies or suspends or elongates the phrasing. and sometimes in terms of his play with the larger form of the song.

btw thanks for that link! that's one of the best reviews of any of bill's albums i've read.

i love "supper" but my favourites of recent albums are this new one and "a river...". it's great that people claim any of the albums to be their favourites but still love another five so much that they can't really decide. i'd be surprised if someone told me "woke on a waleheart" or "rain on lens" were their faves but, unlike other artists, i'd listen again to try and work out why they liked them so much.. and i'd probably end up loving them too.

i agree that he's the best lyricist working now (that i'm aware of) and by some distance.

hm "distance", that's some track.

although as a title "rain on lens" is unbeatable. it's incredibly suggestive.

I did like Callahan's 2009 a lot, btw.

recently i did some design work in the home of a slightly oder english lit academic. on the day i was finishing off i was playing "a river..." and she came rushing through from the next room, where she had been working, to ask me what it was. now she's a bill callahan stan and sent me a text last week saying that she's given up smoking and that the thing that calmed her during a hectic day was the knowledge that she could listen to "too many birds" when her last student had left.

older not odder

although perhaps she is slightly odder now that she's a bill callahan junkie?

i'd say that's a definite.

That Forster review is the best thing I've read on the album.

she got me back by making me read Henry James (unrelated to the smog incident and obviously the other end of the style scale) and now i'm (four books in) a Henry James stan.

xpost was just reading that review. it's great.

Forster touches on it in his review and it always stuns me how Bill can make a simple lyric so evocative.

"i started running/ and the concrete turned to sand"

she got me back by making me read Henry James (unrelated to the smog incident and obviously the other end of the style scale) and now i'm (four books in) a Henry James stan.

The Spoils of Callahan

i just finished that one, my favourite so far.

it always stuns me how Bill can make a simple lyric so evocative

Guns or fireworks are popping
Down in the town
A woman is running
A man jumps up and down
...
I slide in the front seat
The drivers side
To hotwire and hightail crosses my mind
But still in the driveway
Fixed like the stars

I flip on the headlights
And go back inside
The climates controlled
While the battery dies

"clipping the wings of your morning flight"

that line makes me swoon.

The night will end in
Some form of excess
Pants around ankles
Too weak to fully undress

Dude is playing two shows at the Hideout (a very intimate venue) in April. Tickets are $20 (benefit show) and I have no extra money at all right now but I might have to go anyways.

ooh, what HJ have you been reading jed?

oh snap i might have to make it for those shows. wish they were on my spring break.

Ward - "Washington Square", "The Aspern Papers", "Turn of the Screw", "The Spoils of Poynton" and i'm currently on "The Portrait of A Lady" as well as just having bought the fairly large (and pricy, for a paperback) Penguin "Selected Tales" this looks great but I'm slightly put off by the miniscule type - 600 pages of miniscule type.

huh?

"Hop on Pop"

amst, i was answering wards q but i admit it's a strange place to be talking about h. james!

I may be the biggest Callahan fan here, but after three passes, I still think this live album is bland as bread.

Just ordered his book.

Will report back.

I haven't listened to the live album much either. I like some of the new arrangements, mainly of the songs from Woke on a Whaleheart, because that's the only recent album where I'm not a fan of how the album sounds.

I'm a big fan of pretty much everything he did as Smog, but mostly it's been zzzzzzzzzzz since Dongs of Sevotion...

Nah. A River Ain't Too Much to Love and Sometime I Wish We Were an Eagle are two of his best imo.

the book is real good, i think. i thought he might have some problems maintaining the whole grizzled, laconic thing through a whole narrative, but nuh uh. he makes such great use of the elliptical nature of a one-sided epistolary novel, too; "i don't think there is such a thing as ceiling wax".

also you crazy if you've been tuned out since dongs. the lps are way more like albums, since, and i'd put everything bar maybe whaleheart above DOS.

(but yeah the live record just doesn't sound right, bar the well, which sucks because he can be alternately entrancing & rollicking, live).

man is p much the only current singer songwriter i listen to

you crazy if you've been tuned out since dongs

Not really tuned out -- I've heard all the recent albums, just haven't enjoyed much of it lately.

I've also seen him live a few times in Austin, his longtime residence, and think he's a bore live. Sorry...

Nah. A River Ain't Too Much to Love and Sometime I Wish We Were an Eagle are two of his best imo.

― circa1916, Tuesday, August 24, 2010 2:45 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

def. agree with this

^^^^^

thirded.

live album is OK. good, not great. i know i'm a douche for saying this, but i have live shows i got from the internets that are even better.

If...
If you...
If you could...
If you could only...
If you could only stop...
If you could only stop your...
If you could only stop your heart...
If you could only stop your heart beat...
If you could only stop your heart beat for...
If you could only stop your heart beat for one heart...
If you could only stop your heart beat for one heart beat.

― jed_, Sunday, January 10, 2010 9:23 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

otm

― congratulations (n/a), Tuesday, March 9, 2010 7:55 PM (6 months ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

otm

― jed_, Tuesday, March 9, 2010 8:30 PM (6 months ago) Bookmark

OTM.

I listen to Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle a lot. It's amazing. DAMN the tastemakers and the cannibals

:-)

I've also seen him live a few times in Austin, his longtime residence, and think he's a bore live. Sorry...

― ilxor has truly been got at and become an ILXor (ilxor), Tuesday, August 24, 2010 3:52 PM Bookmark

presumptuous apologies...

I saw him at the Starry Plough in Berkeley with ILX poster AKM and he was pretty great, I thought. He has a presence. Also he came and played in the middle of the crowd for the encore.

http://cdn.pitchfork.com/media/callahanposter.jpg

http://pitchfork.com/news/41420-bill-callahan-announces-new-album/

And the live album from 2024, Resuscitate!, is also great.

otm, love that run. He actually hasn’t put out that much new studio stuff since then. Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest is the one I really never got into, but Gold Record is pretty great, kind of a grab bag of different types of songs, the vibe is a little more elusive

also not trying to be too much of a hater (i wish the guy well even when i am not excited by his music) but the cover of the new one is horrendous

https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/691382350d29ccfda4ec662f/master/w_1600,c_limit/Bill-Callahan-My-Days-of-58.jpg

New one is quite nice. Wish my dad could’ve seen Jim White backing up Bill.

Excited for this new record, and not only because, I, too, just turned 58 years old.

I'd like to see just about anybody backed by Jim White (Hey Dylan!)

also not trying to be too much of a hater (i wish the guy well even when i am not excited by his music) but the cover of the new one is horrendous

lol this is pretty good for him! He’s got some pretty bad covers.

The music, otoh, I’m digging. Pathol O.G. could be cringe in its extreme autobiography but it’s hitting me just right here on first listen

Pitchfork review: emphasis on the introspection more than the musical results, seems like, but I haven't yet made myself read whole thing, prob better just to listen or not listen, but anyway here tis. https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/bill-callahan-my-days-of-58/?utm_source=nl&utm_brand=p4k&utm_mailing=P4K_HotLinks_020226&utm_campaign=aud-dev&utm_medium=email&bxid=69a4070808034e47a8102dc6&cndid=&hasha=f8fdcfc45acdadaba09de99d8bc20460&hashb=fc19bb748446b50d54d4d58cdca32d895eb72ca1&hashc=9052bb6ddf5c2dbac1c647b656f69eb06d76a61480b7924f9c3309af2e1287ba&esrc=subscribe-page&utm_term=P4K_HotLinks_NewMusic yeesh sorry web mail

However, your comment is encouraging, Lavator.

also not trying to be too much of a hater (i wish the guy well even when i am not excited by his music) but the cover of the new one is horrendous

didn't think I needed another Bill Callahan album in my life, but I like this new one a lot. The lyrics are strangely confessional in a way that would typically put me off, but they manage to be earnest without being precious. Some of the vocal arrangements also remind me of one of Smog's more under-loved and rarely discussed records that I like, Supper, for example "Why Do Men Sing" = "Feather By Feather"