Bill Callahan - Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest (2019)

i don't listen to as much smog/bc currently as i used to, so periods come and go (it's probably a side effect in part of not feeling as attracted to the last couple few actually), but rain on lens was always the one i had a pronounced disinterest in.

thinking back to what i remember of it, it strikes me as a record where he had the idea to record a number of things in a style, deliberately, or happened upon that idea and committed to experimenting with it, which would not be his usual way, which seems to have been more a matter of working himself into, or finding himself in, a mood or attitude and naturally writing songs to fit.

maybe the new one has more of the exceptional deliberateness to it. though what we've seen of the process in his interviews/press materials for it suggests he just got displaced by life changes and wasn't quite sure how to recover his former processes/methods, but did do what he felt like was the most natural replacement/transformation of them, at present.