Bill Callahan - Dream River

(“Some people feel the taste of pilgrim guts are too strong/I find I can’t get by without it for too long” goes one line on the new album)

http://www.npr.org/event/music/221100223/bill-callahan-sings-small-plane-in-a-big-city

awesome

yeah, sounds great.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9658010/bill-callahan-new-album-dream-river

yeah, i wanna read that boxing bio now

is it just me or has his critical profile really grown in recent years?

like maybe since the transition from smog to bill callahan?

i think his records have gotten more listener friendly (and i don't mean that as a negative thing), so the npr crowd might be more into him.

true, prob a combo of more listener-friendly albums and just sticking around putting out consistently good stuff for a long time

yeah and it's a rare instance where his transition into a somewhat more traditional performer/songwriter sheds a new light on all of his previous stuff? not sure if that makes sense.

anyway, speaking of previous stuff, this tumblr (which i think has been mentioned elsewhere) has been posting some of callahan's old zine writings
http://fuckinrecordreviews.tumblr.com/tagged/Bill-Callahan

gahh i like reading stuff about bill callahan because i like bill callahan but that grantland piece is really annoying

It's just that his wit tends toward the dry ("A Man Needs a Woman or a Man to Be a Man")

like, why is this "dry" wit?

(i love that lyric btw)

yeah it's not very good, i don't need to read exegesis of an album i haven't even heard yet

Conducting a phone interview in a bathroom (as opposed to interviewing via e-mail, his preferred method of interacting with the press) represents a decisive move for Callahan outside of his comfort zone, which is indicative of how the 47-year-old has restructured his life in the past couple years. When I complimented him on his greatly improved singing, particularly on Apocalypse and Dream River, he admitted that he has only recently started approaching his vocals and guitar-playing as crafts that need to be constantly honed and nurtured.

doing a phone interview instead of an email interview constitutes a "decisive" restructuring of his life? and has some kind of relationship to callahan putting a greater focus on his singing? thanks dude, wow!

guys it's fine
there is not enough smog interview in the smog interview but it's fine anyway

yeah it's not very good, i don't need to read exegesis of an album i haven't even heard yet

― congratulations (n/a), Friday, September 13, 2013 2:08 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i posted something a while ago about how his music has been written about extensively but never very well. he doesn't really have the exegetes (?) he deserves.

doing a phone interview instead of an email interview constitutes a "decisive" restructuring of his life?

i didn't love the piece although i enjoyed the enthusiasm of it. I can, however, totally see how deciding to do a phone interview rather than an email one could be a decisive and important choice for someone like BC whose reticence or even inarticulacy (outside of his music) has been made quite a lot of in the past. I dare say even more in his personal life than in the press this has been a thing for him.

iirc Berman also preferred email interviews and had a lot of good reasons to back it up, saying (paraphrasing from a notoriously poor memory) that he only really relied on 'sound bytes' and shit when he was put on the spot, and that he took email interviews seriously, took his time answering them, etc. I guess what you gain from thoughtful responses, you lose in the sort of natural back and forth dynamic, I guess.

Anyway, I'm really excited for this album.

"javelin unlanding" is one of his best songs. total electric eden prog folk. fuck yeah

don't bear around the bush. are you implying theres a leak?

it's out there

the production sounds fucking awesome.

so rich and full of details

whoever plays electric guitar for Bill is... really incredible. guy's a painter. unsurprisingly, this is great. "rich production" OTM. so much neat stuff going on here. seems like he's gotten a lot wordier too. not a bad thing at all.

looking forward to spending a lot of time with this.

i think it's Matt Kinsey

"seems like he's gotten a lot wordier too. not a bad thing at all."

not sure about that yet

Something to be said for the distant "man of few but potent words" persona he owned. I do feel a bit overwhelmed. Just too much to take in and not enough time to ruminate on it.

you mean in the 20 minutes since you downloaded it?

sorta like destroyer, who emulates the hell out of bill

xpost

Har. Lyrically, there's just a lot coming at you. But, yeah, FIRST IMPRESSIONS and all.

xp

apples and ornages
xpost

destroyer:smog :: bowie:bolan

so rich and full of details

gee imagine how good the actual release will sound

if i won't fall in love with the record it might stay as an imaginative thing, yeah:

first impression and all - songs sounds kinda samey, melody wise.

the production is great.

well the only words I said today are "beer" and "thank you"

BTW, before any gets too accusatory about people hearing this before the 'street date' (lol), my vinyl copy came today - a few days early.

how dare you shake what's under the tree

No drag city spotify ;_;

Just bought new QOTSA bc spotify
But I guess this behavior is atypical?

So far liking this more than Apocalypse which, while perfectly fine, I didn't really connect with. Also, I'm totally purchasing this come Tuesday, so sorry Bill and co. about being too excited to wait.

This does feel like maybe a new era for him. More naked and open, less obfuscating, guarded, mysterious. He's ready to talk. That grantland piece making a deal about phone interviews makes some sense. Definitely saw this happening in the Apocalypse doc, which is something I couldn't imagine him being comfortable with some years ago.

Also, this doesn't really register as too same-y. No more than his other records anyway.

what is the general consensus of woke on a whale heart ? i remember reading that it came off as to vague/oblique (lyrically), but i thought it was a sublime record. interest dropped off w/eagle, but sort of rekindled w/apocalypse and seeing him live.. his 'wordiness' gets tiresome. thought the production on woke was insanely good.

Whaleheart left almost no impression on me. Was pretty disappointed with it at the time, but I need to revisit. Been some years. "A River..." and "...Eagle" stand to me as the highlights, but there's certainly no consensus.

I agree with that even if there is no consensus.

whaleheart is great, is ageing great. just so much energy in like day, footprints, diamond dancer, & there's something almost upsetters-ish about the compression of instruments & violins & marching drums into this synthetic trample. what a fun record to play.

My initial resistance to Whaleheart might have been because it was so much lighter and bouncier. Just wasn't what I wanted and expected from Smog/Callahan at the time.

Always like when he gets a little meta like Teenage Spaceship (a teenage Smog sewn to the sky, etc.) or this from Eagle:

"I used to be darker, then I got lighter, then I got dark again."

i guess his metaphors are more "readable" now, much of the time

but i think that's been true since (at least) supper

but one thing i like about bill's lyrics is that they have these kind of confounding / amusing shifts between metaphor and blank description. you know-- the plane is a relationship. wait, it's a plane. no, it's a relationship.

i've never gotten into this one

this is the only one I unambiguously love the whole way through, inc smog, though I haven’t heard all of those

I've heard and enjoyed just about everything he's ever done but I wouldn't hesitate to say that this one is my favorite.

this is really wonderful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQUvbDY8fuw

agree

I discovered this album earlier this year and have been loving it during lockdown. This week I discovered the dub versions, which have taken my love to a higher level. Strong feeling of John Martyn circa "Small Hours".

Have Fun With God is so good--I went straight for it and never looked back (mind, not that it's precisely the same thing but I likewise love No Protection and never listen to Protection proper)