Bill Callahan - Dream River

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.

also the capo'd (?) guitar on this is giving me mid-1970s joni mitchell feelings. has he been listening to hejira lately?

i predict he will make a kind of lite-folk instrumental EP by 2016

or start scat singing

You just used the 'H' word - I am now officially very, very, very psyched.

well, it's not like the whole thing sounds like hejira--just a few touches here and there.

but you will probably like it anyway, b/c it's good

I've never disliked anything Callahan's done, so I'm sure I will like it, but a Hejira reference is like catnip to me

whoever plays electric guitar for Bill is... really incredible. guy's a painter. unsurprisingly, this is great.

yea matt kinsey is amazing. he's a totally essential part of why apocalypse is the great album that it is. i haven't heard the new one yet (i can wait two days for it, jesus guys) but i'm super excited he's on it.

also, whaleheart seems like a minor album of all the ones he's put out since supper but i still like it a lot. there's some great stuff on there, it's upbeat and a lot of fun. "sycamore" is a great bill song by any measure. i like the production throughout -- "the wheel" has kind of a cool gospel feel to it, "a man needs" kind of has this sun records classic country feel

Just found the album on Youtube...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hr_cDKNxby8

crucial whaleheart alt take, https://soundcloud.com/fonsessions/honeymoon-child-bill-callahan

awesome! that almost sounds like it could fit on the second half of supper

just put in that really fluid-y supper guitar sound and you have something really mellow like "anniversary"

whaleheart is easily my least fave of the "bill callahan" albums. it was extra disappointing bc i'm a huge royal trux fan and neil michael hagerty produced it, but the production is part of the problem with that album. agree that 'sycamore' is a great song though.

a donald sutherland interview comes on the truck radio

screw u n/a

A few very random thoughts on first pass:

Bill's records always sound so damn good. And it isn't like he's using the same engineers and producers and studios all the time. In fact, unless I missed it, there's no producer credit on this record at all, just one for the engineer and one for the mastering guy. Which makes me think Bill is the guy responsible for the sound on these albums, which makes me appreciate him even more.

His voice has never sounded better or more expressive than it does on this record. Folks who criticize Bill for being a passionless singer should hear this one.

The consistency of sounds here - the claves, the chorus-effected guitar, the fiddle, the flute, even the Wurlitzer - really makes this album more than the sum of its parts. It's an album you're not going to want to hear in spurts; I think if you pull this out, you're listening to the whole thing.

I hear the Joni influence amateurist mentions upthread, especially on songs like "Seagull," which is so light and breezy in that sophisticated 70s way, but I also hear some Julie Driscoll in the melodies, the way Bill sings these sort of tricky melodies over these really airy, spacious arrangements.

This album could have been called More Songs About Eagles and Rivers. Elemental themes are such a consistent preoccupation at this point, it's as if Bill invented them. Not a criticism, just an observation.

"Javelin Unlanding" is so terrific. And I really love the Wurlitzer on "Ride My Arrow."

I told you they were random thoughts. Anyway, this record is great.

really enjoyed your random thoughts jimmywine. still haven't heard this one (i'll pick it up today) but i do know that bill produced almost all of his albums. jim o'rourke did a couple in the late nineties but since "dongs of sevotion" i think it's all bill.

http://www.spin.com/articles/bill-callahan-dream-river-interview-apocalypse-documentary/

xp Thanks, marcos! And yeah, I'm not sure why I never realized that before, but it makes perfect sense. The drastic change in production style may be the thing that makes WOAW, produced by Hagerty, a lot more difficult for some folks to connect with than other BC albums.

BNM today on Pitchfork, and a good, well-written review by Lindsey Zoladz. Only surprising thing was no mention of "Javelin Unlanding!"

the spin article is great

i wasn't crazy about the pitchfork review, too much focus on wryness and chuckling

this is a really lovely article, the sense of the landscape throughout is so dreamy

yeah and it actually tells you something about his life and process

this record is lovely. instrumentation in "javelin unlanding" supports my idea that bill's records are increasingly reflecting the more contemplative van morrison records. pulling for a horn section on his next one.

free's on apocalypse totally has a van morrison vibe

damn the lyrics on javelin unlanding are so good. esp the part from "sometimes it's hard to know when to call it an evening" to "first drafts in ashes and smeared on our faces"

it's spring that gives me the greatest hejira vibes

so this is good, though it still hasn't sunk in yet for me. it's only been a couple of listens, so maybe this is premature, but it all seems to flow together more than some of the others. i feel like the songs have less of individual identity than they do on bill's other albums. like i felt like i knew all the songs on apocalypse and eagle after one listen. it all might clarify with more listens though.

apocalypse felt a lot heavier to me -- that pitchfork review mentioned upthread was right saying that apocalypse had this sense of finality to it (i thought it was a well-written review throughout, too). here they all have this light and open conga-drumming flutey feel to them that keeps the mood fairly light throughout. it is a more sensual album, too. i guess it makes sense that this would feel like a smaller record than apocalypse. but maybe it's heaviness hasn't set in yet for me.

hmmm, I hope I like this. I definitely preferred the more structured songs on Apocalypse over the more rambling ones

proceed with caution then

The guitar work is beautiful. So far it's the best of the Callahan solo records I've heard.

it's growing on me. "spring" and "ride my arrow" are early faves.

so much jazzy flute argh

so much jazzy flute :D

so much jazzy flute hmm ugh well i guess some it is okay

moodles, while this is very loose and rambling in some places, it really is quite different from the looser stuff on apocalypse imo.

love this album