Bill Callahan - Dream River

yes!
Dream River coming out Spet. 17

1. "The Sing"
2. "Javelin Unlanding"
3. "Small Plane"
4. "Spring "
5. "Ride My Arrow"
6. "Summer Painter"
7. "Seagull"
8. "Winter Road"

― mizzell, Tuesday, June 18, 2013 4:40 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i am psyched for the possibility of a bill callahan song called "javelin unlanding"

― emo canon in twee major (BradNelson), Tuesday, June 18, 2013 4:50 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yesssss

― daft on the causes of punk (schlump), Tuesday, June 18, 2013 4:51 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"easily the most sensual and soulful of Callahan's career"

― tylerw, Tuesday, June 18, 2013 6:36 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

those are some delightful song titles. "The Sing", "Small Plane", "Spring". can't wait for this.

― cajunsunday, Tuesday, June 18, 2013 6:44 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

look forward to everything this dude does

his new press photo is so smily!

http://blogg.svt.se/psl/files/Bill-Callahan-608x397-583x380.jpg

perhaps that is the Dream River behind him

that boy needs a haircut

he looks goofier and less handsome there than in most photos

no

his press shots are an interesting history. gonna assume most photos excludes the river guard shot of him shaving.

http://cdn2.pitchfork.com/news/51443/ee265778.jpg

Callahan will hit the road in support of the record this fall, touring across the U.S. Dates below. His backing band will include Matt Kinsey on guitar and Jamie Zuverza on bass. Mick Turner of Dirty Three will open many of the shows.

09-25 Houston, TX - McGonigel's Mucky Duck
09-26 Baton Rouge, LA - Spanish Moon
09-28 Athens, GA - The 40 Watt
09-29 Chapel Hill, NC - Cat's Cradle
10-01 Charlottesville, VA - The Jefferson Theater
10-02 Washington, DC - Sixth & I Historic Synagogue
10-03 Philadelphia, PA - First Unitarian Church
10-04 Providence, RI - Columbus Theatre
10-05 Boston, MA - The Sinclair
10-06 New York, NY - Webster Hall
10-08 Ithaca, NY - The Haunt
10-09 Pittsburgh, PA - The Warhol - Carnegie Lecture Hall
10-10 Cleveland, OH - Beachland Ballroom
10-11 Detroit, MI - Trinosophes
10-12 Madison, WI - High Noon Saloon
10-13 Minneapolis, MN - Cedar Cultural Center
10-14 Chicago, IL - Alhambra Palace
10-16 St. Louis, MO - Old Rock House
10-17 Columbia, MO - Mojo's
10-18 Springfield, MO - Outland Ballroom
10-19 Norman, OK - The Opolis
11-12 Phoenix, AZ - Rhythm Room *
11-13 Pioneertown, CA - Pappy & Harriets *
11-14 Los Angeles, CA - The Japan American Theatre *
11-15 Santa Barbara, CA - Soho *
11-16 San Francisco, CA - Great American Music Hall *
11-17 San Francisco, CA - The Chapel *
11-19 Portland, OR - The Aladdin *
11-20 Seattle, WA - Neumos *
11-22 Boise, ID - Neurolux
11-23 Salt Lake City, UT - The State Room
11-25 Denver, CO - The Oriental Theater

* with Mick Turner

wonderful artwork. really excited for this album/tour.

i was talking about this on the chicago thread bc i'd never heard of the alhambra palace before but it looks like it's a huge moroccan restaurant? pretty cool looking actually. i'll probably go to the show.

i pretty much never go to shows for various reasons (infant son, full-time work, etc.) but i'll certainly go to this

ha ditto

also really excited that matt kinsey is playing on this record, his work on apocalypse was amazing

idk about the artwork. it's..trying too hard..

the fonts of his name are awesome though

mick turner support is a treat. wish i could get to one of these.

i am assuming this is the guy who did the apocalypse sleeve, i wish the BILL CALLAHAN was written as texturally unobtrusively as on that but it's nice, yeah

alright, a denver show!

i am not a fan of that cover

coming to Santa Barbara! been frequently revisiting 'sometimes I wish we were an eagle' lately since it and Tusk are the only CDs in my car

you want a different dream river, go ahead and have one, this is callahan's dream river

ha

dude likes rivers, no doubt. not his first river title, even. frequently refers to himself as a river. frankly, I'd be damned surprised if n/a could supply a better river than a guy with so many river credentials

I love the cover, just not the font on the bottom. Otherwise, it's a beaut.

Dude is not playing anywhere near me, natch, but this is one of my most anticipated 2013 releases. Very psyched.

"I love the cover, just not the font on the bottom. Otherwise, it's a beaut."

yeah it looks so odd and unresolved and that's coming from someone who thinks complaining about fonts is a weird affectation that must stop.

yeah odd and unresolved i dunno do we know anyone like that

i was talking about this on the chicago thread bc i'd never heard of the alhambra palace before but it looks like it's a huge moroccan restaurant? pretty cool looking actually. i'll probably go to the show.

― congratulations (n/a), Tuesday, July 9, 2013 11:32 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

went to a wedding party there, it's great. and good food, actually.

I love the cover, just not the font on the bottom. Otherwise, it's a beaut.

yea i like the hand-brushed title but i'm not crazy about the font for his name. in any case yes this is also probably my most anticipated 2013 album.

so i'm in the minority here?

btw there's an imminent documentary

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/apocalypse-a-bill-callahan-tour-film

morbius i haven't seen that documentary but i think it came out last year, right?

dunno, first I've heard of it.

You had to Kickstart to see it. It's good, worth seeing.

btw there's an imminent documentary

http://www.filmlinc.com/films/on-sale/apocalypse-a-bill-callahan-tour-film

― playwright Greg Marlowe, secretly in love with Mary (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, July 10, 2013 9:12 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i saw it, it's kind of boring i think.

yeah

tylerrrrrr, your denver show is w/the howling hex!

11/25/13 Oriental Theater Denver CO w/ The Howling Hex

radical. was wondering if hagerty was still in the area, the hex haven't played here in a while.

Expanding Dub / Highs In The Mid-40s Dub. VINYL FORMAT. Two dub versions of songs from Callahan's forthcoming Dream River album on Drag City due in September.

Wanna hear those dubs.

I have in front of me an opportunity to go see this man at a place called Pappy and Harriet's Pioneertown Palace, just outside Joshua Tree. An outdoor venue that encourages bbqin' under the stars. It's a two and a half hour drive from where I am, and I'd probably have to do a half day at work the next day in order to fully enjoy myself. But I'm thinking I should take this opportunity despite the costs.

Thought that Apocalypse doc was solid! Then I saw it projected outdoors while eating tacos and drinking beer and Callahan played a few songs at the end.

album title is making me want to hear callahan sing "moon river"

del griffith that sounds like an awesome opportunity!

pappy and harriet's is GREAT do it do it

The dub track is kind of really awesome:

http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/06/listen-up-the-singer-songwriter-bill-callahan-makes-a-foray-into-dub/?smid=tw-share&_r=1&

cool
He said the resonant conga beat that drives “Javelin Unlanding” lent itself to a dub makeover.

this makes me excited for the album version

lol i'd really prefer to hear the album version first. ha i'm not sure that the dub format suits callahan that great? i always appreciate how honest the production is on recent albums, esp. apocalypse, his voice comes across so clean that i don't really feel like i need/want spacey dub effects. i mean, i love dub, but callahan satisfies other needs i have and not my spacey dub needs

(“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.

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

ooooooooooooooooohh JAVELI

n lol

it all seems to flow together more than some of the others

in the interview posted above bill explains that this was his express ambition--to make a record that's all of a piece and without huge jolts between songs so could fall asleep to it (in a good way)

giving praise in a quiet way

This *has* become the record I fall asleep to (in a good way).

the rich or the poor -- who am i working for?

the ny times review was pretty good, i thought: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/19/arts/music/bill-callahans-dream-river.html?_r=0

yeah that's a smart review

well
so this is very nice

i am enjoying it, enjoying it like i enjoy a new smog record & whatever i get to latch on to on it. there are those lines in small plane; I always went wrong in the same place/where the river splits towards the sea/that couldn’t possibly be/you and me”. it's very graceful. it's interesting to me that he seems to have more like- not formulaically, but willingly grown into this particular mode. it reminds me of those last few philip roth novels, each of which had a dedicated, researched appreciation and respect for some particular vocation, this extensive, didactic, procedural description of what the gravedigger or the jeweler does. & on this & the last couple, writing about boat-painting seems more like that - interrogative, literary - even more than river guard was specifically about swimming instructors. there's something of the reporter or of the premise about it. i get kinda emotional even thinking about smog records being released because they all chronicle, so neatly, my adult life & everything that orbited around their release. so hearing this slightly supper-ish guitar tone is a very strong & redolent thing, his totally blithe, lazy electric strumming. & he's playing with this particular sonic vernacular that's somewhere near fm-radio & somewhere slightly beyond tasteful; like the guitars have this kind of lindsey buckingham resonance but are played off, slightly, twisted to ring more awkwardly (i have no musical vocabulary but i feel like i could probably say minor chords here & get away with it; the skew of cold discovery, of ride my arrow). & within that vernacular he gets to be so playful - what's jazzy about this record to me isn't so much the instrumentation (though, sure, it is, almost in that weird vein of like that john mclaughliny kinda shit i never listened to, peppery flutes & grinding freak-out electro-guitar), but in how the language works. he's so into just holding the moment of singing confi-den~~tial~~, like the first time the word has been used in a refrain for like twenty years, & running it into the ground with isn't/ain't/not, the sense of fixing the music in this rolling present. & this is such a great record for thor. i was always thorgnostic. smog was always the only person to get away with that clumsy, leaden percussion thing but the clippy gallop here is beautiful, the percussion just this ultra light touch. there are bits i love on this more than other parts but how democratically available it is, how loose & open, makes it very satisfying, i think.

hey jed what do you think?

I have never heard a single instrument fuck up a song so much as the flute on this thing. It makes Bill sound like he's singing every line with sarcastic finger quotes. Vibey flutes are like pearl earrings, they work great on some people's songs but imho, not this, no. "Ride My Arrow" is amazing though, "Life ain't confidential, no no no, it's not, it isn't, and it ain't confidential" yesssss

ha, i really disagree? i really do feel the thing he said about trying to make this kinda cohesive, semi-soporific record, & i feel like the flute is part of this kinda peppery gestalt. i was walking to the library today watching leaves fall & twirl to it, the flute is really a part of the shuffly, ornate thing he's doing. & yeah ride my arrow is unreal, the opening four or five lines, i'm so engrossed/.

For me the flute evokes -- in ways I'm not prepared to fully explain now -- "He Loved Him Madly."

Oh, I said "this thing" but I meant specifically "Javelin Unlanding". It reminds me of "Winter Song" except I don't know of the lyrics to "Winter Song" because it's just flute and strings taking up the entire emotional landscape. I didn't even know the name of "Winter Song", I've listened to that record so many times ("Chelsea Girls") but I had to look it up, it's always been "the one with the flutes all over it".

But yeah, specifically that song. The little flute details elsewhere are nice enough. The fiddle reminds me of Scarlet Rivera, which rules.

i can't tell whether you are taking winter song's name in vain, or whether you are using it as a damning comparison, here, i feel like your case against the flute is anaemic either way, what is this.

that said, & in keeping with all of our tentative & non-committal judgments, i really wanted to say something about the fiddle, here, but it was vaguer even than what i wrote above. it's plucked, on something, i think?, & is lovely, but there's something kinda interesting to me about him using something that has such (emotional-landscape-kinda) distinct connotations & mood, for me, that i can't get to the bottom of yet. like something about how serene it can make everything sound that makes it like he's invoking genre.

:) my arguments are deliberately anaemic because that's my cool style. I love "Winter's Song"! but I don't know anything about that song except the flute and strings and guitar, Nico's emotional centre is so obscured by that flute-- beside the point, but Nico herself detested it. I saw the lyric sheet to "Winter's Song" and thought "huh, I know every nuance of that string arrangement but couldn't tell you a single phrase of lyrics". Same is true of "Javelin Unlanding". Vibey flute will always be a foreground instrument and that's super cool on some tracks and some artists (incl. Nico) but to my ears the flute is a strange intruder on this Bill Callahan album.

I deliberately don't get too judgementface on message boards because without fail the lead singer's sister is reading the thread and I don't ever really talk about music like that irl anyway. Also, my own mercurial opinions

ha ha: can a mod take this to 77 so we can go deep in personally dissecting this record's themes. i feel like we are maybe coming at this from slightly different places, but i like your weird aphasia; i don't think i'm so politicised about anybody else's musical make-up but i guess i feel like this record is smog songs, like recent smog albums are, & then as ornate a decoration of his fairly standard guitar rumble as is possible, in which an over-active flute couldn't really distract me from his baritone, you know. but that is cool. i don't know exactly what is doing what musically.

I must admit there's a big gap in my Smog-knowledge (Smnogledge?) bc I only paid lip service to his 2000s albums. Resubscribed with "Eagle"

i think hearing the one a couple before that, a river ain't too much to love, is a cool move that will enhance your life; it was only with the new one, & reading some stuff from interviews that dredged up the minor drama of his namechange, that i noticed how cohesive the last five are. it's the first one in which he gets into this slightly more classical, essentialist aesthetic, i think; he recorded it at willie nelson's studio & the sorta genre i'm implying exists when he uses a fiddle is abundant in reverby harp, various rollicking harpsichord kinda instruments, &c. also: jim white, joanna newsom piano parts, &c&c&c.

track one, swoon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuqXEZT0pxY

& fyi, the correct term is smogducation, & i will school you in supper next

ha, I've heard all those records. "Lip service" means they get played around the house and I've once actively listened, but prior to "Eagle" my preference was for straight jokes Smog, "Julius Caesar" through "Kicking A Couple Around" is gospel to me, not the singer-smogwriter of "Dongs" onward

man look at me callahansplaining

kicking a couple around is the cause of much inner doubt for me because it has all the makings of peak smog, has i break horses, &c, but it's sorta just too-halfway for me. slo-mo smog.

dongs is p irresistible to me but I'm glad somebody repsfor Julius Caesar

I don't think he's made a bad album.

rain on lens has a lot of filler, and some of the songs are bill at his most misterioso and pretentious. at the time it felt like maybe he was running out of steam, but in retrospect it makes more sense.

of course the early noisy stuff (cassettes, first three LPs I guess) is not for all tastes but i think it's pretty brilliant.

like i said, supper is kind of my favorite, but as i spend more time with the last few maybe i'll change that opinion. funny to think that supper is basically in the middle of his career. still seems like a "recent" record to me.

"dongs of sevotion" def. is the best album title though

This is my introduction to Callahan and boy I really really love this.

i still haven't gone back to rain on lens - the only alb. i haven't heard, i think - in ca. 10 years, i kind of like it that way

er, haven't heard, since that first time or two made me say, what is going on HERE, then put it away

Andrew: When you started Smog, the lo-fi tape-swapping scene was seeing a sort of renaissance. Can you talk a bit about the experience of making/self-distributing your own cassettes?

Bill: I can kind of relate to Rod Stewart on this one thing. You go to the Emergency Room to have an excess of semen pumped from your stomach one time and it follows you around for the rest of your life.

lol

A: Your last album, Apocalypse, obviously had a lot political underpinnings to it, which seemed to really embody the album itself. Lyrically, what was your main focus when approaching Dream River?

B: I had been inching my way through The Tibetan Book of the Dead. I worked out a system where I estimated how long I expect myself to live and divided the number of words in The Tibetan Book of the Dead by how many days I expected to live. So that I could read only the amount of words per day that would have me finishing the book near my expected expiration date. Turns out I can read three words per day. That was a big inspiration for Dream River, because it would just stimulate my brain enough to work. Still working on it, obviously! Some people live by, “One day at at time,” I live by “Three words in a day.”

this is p interesting, http://www.noripcord.com/features/waiting-light-day-interview-bill-callahan

He's right about Brit Beer

no he isn't that's nonsense.

bought this today, haven't listened yet. jeez drag city really sticks you for the single-platter vinyl tho

Amazing that you can still buy Supper LP for $12 from Drag City and the new one is $18 (more at stores obv).

i feel like somebody there has to have some kind of traumatic backstory involving mp3 downloads, not including coupons with vinyl feels like almost anti-vinyl to me

i love the sound of this album, the percussion, flutes, and low key grooves bring to mind brighblack morning light without the hippie flakiness (both a good and bad thing). anyway bill is on a roll, every album since a river is great (and as i hinted at above i just bought supper so maybe i will think that one is great too). i can't really rank them either, a lot people seem down on whaleheart but it has diamond dancer, sycamore, and honeymoon child, three songs that would be career highlights for pretty much any contemporary songwriter, imo.

Anyone know if record is cheaper at shows?

:|

:-o

so i listened to this record again this morning and it really hit me this time. it's really wonderful. the heaviness of the record started to set in and the songs' individual characters revealed themselves to me a little bit more. i started noticing more of the great lyrics and singing on here rather than the flutes and congas and grooves that were more immediately apparent at first listen.

the tune that really hit me this morning was "summer painter" -- it reminded me so much of "drover," like this exploration of this vocation and the narrator's confrontation with nature, overwhelming the narrator and acting as a turning point in the song. that point in drover when bill sings quietly, "and my cattle turns on me / i was knocked back flat" and all the instrumentation calls up the sound of cattle storming. and here in "summer painter" all this swirling guitar evoking the hurricane.

only had a few listens, waiting for the album to register beyond the pleasant production... the percussion is interesting and there is some nice electric guitar parts. still, this sounds well-smoothed out, refined BC. vocal melody on "small plane" faintly recalls the same one used on "our anniversary." i would choose rain on lens over this, easily. funny he's receiving near-unanimous praise and exposure for river dream, with all of the (superior) material that has come before it. hope it's a grower

agree with that completely, braunld, i think it *sounds* good but doesn't really interest me. there are some really good lines (The only words i've said today/ are "beer" and "thank you") and some other lines where my reaction was like - eh, did you really do that? - like he's teasing you by making you think he's going to make the most obvious/cheesy rhyme ever... and he does make that rhyme you dreaded. he pauses a bit before the awful rhyme... and does it anyway. i'm 100% sure it's intentional but i don't like it.

schlump, i don't like the flutes. i think they kill "javelin unlanding". i had such high hopes for this track from the title but it's weird goodness is killed by flutes imo.

the opening track is the only one i really like - the "we're all looking for a body/ or a means to make one sing" closer on that track is great but it still doesn't come anywhere close to the highs on apocalypse!

huh. that's really interesting to hear, jed; i'm kinda bummed!, cause your enthusiasm for apocalypse - front to back - satisfies me, i guess knowing there's an appetite for its more drawn-out moments whether or not they're the things that ring out to me. i really like this record more & more, anyhow. it's funny that you & goon-tie are so against the flutes; i listen & don't even hear a flute, distinctly, i'm just playing eyebrow-jazz-flute at whoever i am passing, hearing it on headphones, the flute the punctuation of his verses, not dissimilar to those kinda depth-charge guitar swells he detonates periodically. i think the flutes, too, have this kind of purer feel than some of the other sounds, than the americana-n fiddle, anyway, they're part of the energy & movement, like the shakers are, rather than part of the cinematic dressing. the arrangements on this are really interesting to me, & pleasuably kinda piecemeal upon familiarity; i can't hear javelin or the sing without waiting for their short chapters to end & for the part with the strummed fiddle to start, or for the flutes to climb onto their perch, for the guitar to screech into some fugue. they're very rollercoaster. & lyrically it's very rich, i think - though for sure looser than what he was doing on like jim cain or baby's breath - & here only in a way that is incrementally revealed to me. the only parts that adhere to the kinda dumb-rhymes criticism i can think of are the impossibly grand line, & perhaps the boat-painting jam, but those like ... they aren't distracting me. there's so much just littered that resonates; outside a train sings its whale song / to a long long train, long long gone / then silence comes back alone. & those lines about the war, handled with kinda house-style exquisite grace, i think. for real his kinda jokes here - pilgrim guts, jokes/thank you - are far less interesting to me than just the space in his i guess "less poetic", more straightforward moments. one of my #favouritesmogmoments is him singing TO FAMILY IS ALL YOU CAN DO, in day, & he's on a similar wavelength, here. they make me feel some closeness. i don't know. i like having a new smog record a lot. they are such a nice part of my life.

B: I had been inching my way through The Tibetan Book of the Dead. I worked out a system where I estimated how long I expect myself to live and divided the number of words in The Tibetan Book of the Dead by how many days I expected to live. So that I could read only the amount of words per day that would have me finishing the book near my expected expiration date. Turns out I can read three words per day. That was a big inspiration for Dream River, because it would just stimulate my brain enough to work. Still working on it, obviously! Some people live by, “One day at at time,” I live by “Three words in a day.”

bill callahan: trolling interviewers since 1991

I'm ok with this not being a masterpiece; A River Ain't Too Much To Love was that. After many listens, I like this one as much as Apocalypse, which is to say a great deal, but not more than my favorite Smog albums (The Doctor Came At Dawn, Julius Ceasar, Red Apple falls, etc). But, like Destroyer and a precious handful of others, Callahan coasting beats 90% of so-called 'singer songwriters' at their very best.

went to go see him in cambridge, MA on saturday, it was outstanding

felt really grateful to be there. i have a one-year old so i pretty much never go to shows, even before being a parent, too. so i felt like a lucky man.

his band is incredible, matt kinsey especially, he just filled the room up with these beautiful swirling washes, he contributes SO much to this band. drummer is a really young-looking guy who handled the congas really well.

they played almost all of the new album, maybe half of apocalypse, and a couple songs off "a river ain't too much to love." nothing earlier than that. "sycamore" was a highlight, totally slowed down and blissful. psyched he played "universal applicant," not that it's a favorite song of mine, it just seems like a weird and unobvious tune to play live and for that reason i appreciated it. and that part at the end where bill's singing "and the drunk / and the punk" etc. was just spectacularly gorgoes, kinsey's guitar just washing over everthing.

also was it ilxor NA who said that "america" is really one of the highlights of "apocalypse" and not the goofy outlier? cuz right on, that song got everyone in room moving more than any other tune, it totally killed.

also, seeing him and his band play the "dream river" songs live really made me appreciate the album a lot more. i already thought it's great album, but played live these songs just seemed so full. and the grooves in certain tunes, especially "ride my arrow" had this almost menacing feel that doesn't come off at first listen to the record.

*gorgeous not "gorgoes" obviously, lol

totally urge everyone who posts in this thread to check him out on this tour

lol also bill was a wearing a t-shirt with this huge graffiti-style cartoon hawk on it

found it!
http://allstonpudding.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/billcallahan-15.jpg

i saw him a while ago & have ~thoughts~ about it which i will inflict here sometime but one thing is that i was surprised by how fine spring was, sung, & this is nice & demonstrative of that,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPlkr2ILuqM

there are smog "proper" threads elsewhere but i may as well ask it here since the album doesn't have it's own thread -- what's the consensus on rain on lens? feel like it doesn't get mentioned much but this album is killer, right? i'm really digging it. really edgy and tense, it doesn't have the warmth of supper but the quality is really high.

it just has a really great sense of movement, too

also, on a different note, i feel like a lot of the reviews/articles about "dream river" are locating bill's current streak as starting with "a river ain't too much to love" -- is this kind of sudden or has that been the thinking for a while?

i certainly feel like that one has more in common with his bill callahan albums than his smog albums. not sure when i started thinking that though

sonically it's a world apart

For what it's worth, based on seeing Callahan last week and on reading the available setlists, during the current tour the only Smog songs he's been playing are from "A River Ain't Too Much to Love": "Say Valley Maker" and "Rock Bottom Riser." That may simply be a matter of the older songs feeling over-familiar, rather than "A River" marking the beginning of Callahan's latest creative phase, though.

he played a couple of things from supper as well as bathysphere when i saw him after apocalypse!

xp - what'd you think of the show?

There wasn't as much sense of discovery for me as there could have been -- the setlist was mostly drawn from "Dream River" and "Apocalypse," and the arrangements were very close to the recorded versions -- but it was a strong performance. I was slightly disappointed that the setlist didn't reach back farther (the last time I saw Callahan, in 2006 or so, his set was more chronologically diverse), but I was impressed at Callahan's ability to get his vocal subtleties across in a crowded room. (The clave parts on the recent songs also carried over surprisingly well.) The highlight for me might have been "Sycamore" (which for the first few instrumental bars I mistook for a very drawn-out cover of "You and Your Sister"), which benefits from a sparer arrangement than the "Whaleheart" version, along with an ominous version of "Summer Painter."

No flute in the touring band, but I can't say it was missed; Matt Kinsey's guitar carried most of the countermelodies.

yea i felt the same way re: lack of flute

they played a similar version of sycamore at the cambridge, MA show, sparer and slower. i like Whaleheart but i'd enjoy hearing an alternate take on the entire album, something a little more sparse and minimal and not quite as jaunty

Agreed -- Hagerty's production is interesting in its own right, but I feel like there are already enough distancing/ironizing effects at work in Callahan's lyrics and vocal delivery that a drier sound better suits his songs.

this album is grrrrreat. i love the flute.
whaleheart is kind of where i got on board with callahan, i think it's very good.

i've been listening to this album pretty much daily and it is terrific. only bummer is Winter Road, which i don't find interesting lyrically or melodically. still hoping it will click for me. also i wish javelin were longer.

a donald sutherland interview comes on
the truck radio
he apologizes to all he's loved and sired

long shot of my face

otm

Show at Mojos last night was good. He didn't turn the phaser off until the second to last song.
Matt Kinsey is definitely earning it, he was great.
Met a Z S doppleganger.

Damn, he played at mojos last night?

By chance, I am rolling into Columbia TONIGHT (gonna be at the new tongues show - haven't heard them before but friends are attending) so lemme know if you're there tripmaker!

Afraid to meet the doppelgänger though. Every time I do I end up with lower self-esteem afterward

i'm gonna be at New Brookland Tavern on 10/30 -- anyone in Columbia should come say hi! I don't know anyone there! we can talk about how good this record is.

Dammit, I'm gonna be back in DC by then!

It's all dopplegangers in Como. But I wouldn't be worried if I were you.
I may drop in to Cafe Berlin.

Wrong Columbia, Tyler, but the thought is appealing.

haha, damnit!

we are playing st louis on the nov 5, but that's a ways away from columbia, right?

had a go at reviewing it: http://crackmagazine.net/music/bill-callahan/
criticisms fully welecomed bte.

*btw

listen to Robert Forster talk about Dream River.

nice!

damn this album is so good.

^^

it really is, so damn good.

damn this album is so good.

― tylerw, Wednesday, November 13, 2013 11:54 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^

it really is, so damn good.

― JACK SQUAT about these Charlie Nobodies (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Wednesday, November 13, 2013 11:58 AM (3 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes

everything about it has grown on me. parts of it seemed light and inconsequential at first but i really love it from start to finish

"Summer Painter" is the one that's knocking me out currently. Music has kind of an "On The Beach" vibe, lyric/vocal has this mystified malevolence that I can't imagine anyone except Callahan pulling off.

When the hurricane hit some found it suspicious
That I’d just since left the frame
Like all that time spent down by the water
Had somehow given me control over the rain
Some people say wrongly that I wash things away
Guess I got my rainy day

love that

Tyler how many more of my favorite newly acquired albums are you going to profess your love for today?

haha, i don't know!
his delivery on "guess I got my rainy day" there is definitely top 5 musical moments of 2013 for me.

yeah this record is so masterful

When the hurricane hit some found it suspicious
That I’d just since left the frame
Like all that time spent down by the water
Had somehow given me control over the rain
Some people say wrongly that I wash things away
Guess I got my rainy day

yes i love this too. haha, especially "wrongly"! i feel like a successful delivery of those lines is hard to pull off, it seems wordy at first but callahan just does it wonderfully

I'm bummed that I still haven't had a chance to hear this

huh he's almost two consecutive nights at the royal festival hall. gotten popular since i last saw him. but i got a ticket!

maybe you'll be lucky and he'll wear the cartoon hawk t-shirt i mentioned upthread

if not i'll storm out immediately.

there was a big bill callahan feature in pitchfork yesterday: http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/9261-bill-callahan/

seeing this dude tonight! (Still haven't heard the new album)

apparently he's been playing "white light / white heat" ??!!!

also, i'm going to hold off on listening to this til after I see him next week, but - http://www.npr.org/event/music/245037681/bill-callahan-live-in-concert

he played white light/white heat at the fun fun fun fest in austin last week, haven't heard about other dates tho

friend said he did it in pioneertown, ca a few nights ago too... not even sure if i can imagine it?

oh cool! feel like there's always been a pretty significant VU influence in his work tho

also, maybe it was in the teenage spaceship thread, but there was a lot of talk recently about his increased level of exposure now, more critical awareness, etc. i feel like part of the reason is that bill is more actively promoting himself now? doing more interviews, the documentary, special concerts, etc.

i mean, in addition to making somewhat more accessible music

he certainly seems less scary these days. i interviewed dan bejar a million years ago, and he was talking about how much he loved smog, but he said something like "i feel like you have to be some kind of sociopath to write those lyrics." which is interesting -- i probably agreed at the time, but his recent work is kind of making me re-assess the vibe of the smog years.

Speaking of bejar, I saw him solo acoustic the other day and he was surprisingly talkative. He maybe said 3 words the previous times I saw him

re: the pitchfork piece, would it be so terrible for music publications to impose a ratio of direct-artist-quotation to thoughtful-author-musing in interviews? i am totally psyched to hear about the contents of that borrowed apartment & how much the guy gets a kick out of teenage spaceship & how bill is famously a prickly & laconic interview subject although lately is not so much & in this instance & in fact generally now by large is actually not, but it sucks to have a ~career spanning retrospective~ that has like four lines of direct introspectiveness

hyped to hear about the hexxxx/smog show tyler, report back at length

totally. missed the last hex denver show, shamefully.

ha ya i wasnt sure why it went into so much detail about like... an apartment that wasnt even his... and never mentioned even where he actually lives?

The Spin article was way better.

yea totally. i like that writer (mark richardson) but less so in his formal writing for pitchfork. much prefer his informal stuff on his blog. i also feel like the p4k article didn't tell me anything new at all, either about callahan himself or even novel or thoughtful takes on his music.

would it be so terrible for music publications to impose a ratio of direct-artist-quotation to thoughtful-author-musing in interviews?

otm. so disappointing when i see an "interview" that is like 80% the writer talking about the artist and 20% the artist talking.

been listening to Fred Neil and Silver Jews with drinks. I don't think my gf enjoys this kind of thing. I'm that dude with imaginary gurus, dragging his gf along for the ride tonight.

she dragged me to cold war kids tbf

I once filled in for a guitarist in a rap/reggae band opening for some dude from "slightly stupid" and some dude had dragged his gf like 200 miles to see said dude

Opened with white light/white heat. Followed with javelin. Good show! Picked up dream river.

Had no idea ilxor some dude was either in or into Slightly Stoopid.

I didn't expect this:
http://adamcarolla.com/bill-callahan-and-robert-patrick-lewis/

He did CBB too

show in Denver this week was excellent -- opened with white light white heat w/ neil hagerty shredding behind him. all of the dream river stuff sounded great, but the highlight for me was the lonnnnnnng "one fine morning," which felt like one of those epic van morrison tracks. worst part of the evening was that I arrived just before 9pm to learn that the howling hex had already played! embarrassing, since i think i'm the only howling hex fan in denver. 9pm though! I wouldn't have been able to make it down earlier if i had known...

this got mojo album of the year btw, which is surprising. i love smog but ive yet to hear the guys solo records yet

they are all solo records, really

also does anything else think the big extended cover of percy mayfield's "please send me someone to love" they've been doing on (every stop on?) this tour is kind of a mess? for one thing, bill cannot sell those lyrics at all. i mean, obviously it's kind of purposely a mess, almost a piss-taking thing where callahan "solos" on a blues number. but for that reason it's not much fun to listen to. i was kind of psyched when I heard he was doing this cover on the tour, b/c i'm a huge percy mayfield fan, but i was way disappointed.

i mean the earliest smog stuff is literally solo.

yeah, the idea of the "please send me someone to love" cover was better than its actuality...

well i think a lot of specialness of the original is in mayfield's delivery and while bill has many strengths as a singer he just can't pull it off with the same emotional dexterity. he should probably stay away from songs in the R&B tradition, it just reveals his limitations.

it's a mix of despondency and wry humor, and the way mayfield goes up and down his register, bill just can't compete. dig:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqg_h51y4cI

it's a nice gesture, though. i sometimes worry i'm the only one under 60 that remembers and loves that sort of postwar R&B.

i do worry that in a decade or two my enthusiasm for this stuff will be like people in the 1960s who dug turn-of-the-century record artists like nora bayes, i.e. totally marginal and weird.

well then i've got some bad news for ya, buddy

lol http://www.dragcity.com/products/have-fun-with-god

hmmm, i didn't listen to that dub single, was it good?

eh

it was kinda cool to hear but i didn't feel like it was totally worth revisiting

x-post a few posts up

it's a nice gesture, though. i sometimes worry i'm the only one under 60 that remembers and loves that sort of postwar R&B.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Thursday, November 28, 2013 8:56 AM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

A few of us do...But I understand the feeling

will buy this for the sleeve

http://exclaim.ca/images/bill21.jpg

ha that owns

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/18866-bill-callahan-have-fun-with-god/

can someone shed some light on "I've got limitations/like Marvin Gaye"?

Thank christ "Sing" doesn't have a flute murdering it. Great song.

http://www.freep.com/article/20131009/ENT04/310090011/

http://rock.rapgenius.com/Bill-callahan-the-sing-lyrics#note-2415360

detroit free press my ass, stupid paywall

here ya go:

http://permanentsmile.tumblr.com/post/63760595214/bill-talks-songwriting-guitar-greatness-and-marvin

thanks Sufjan. i figured it was something like that but thought it may be a specific lyrical reference.

np. Since my partner would prefer not to hear Bill playing in our small apartment, side A of this record has become my every morning ritual. "The Sing" really is awesome, but I don't mind the flute on other tracks. I'm not sure that I prefer the flute, but I don't mind it.

love the flute

sufjan how attached are you to this partner

haha, very! I even enjoy a bit of music disagreement, though.

what's her Bill beef?

she thinks he "talk sings". she has vocal hangups. she's not into Mountain Goats or Silver Jews either. But she saw both Bill and MGs live with me, so I don't think she minds too much. I just give her veto privs so I can maintain my own veto privs. otherwise I'd be hearing THAO & THE GET DOWN STAY DOWN a lot more.

I also thing I overplayed A River Ain't Too Much To Love on a roadtrip to San Diego, and she's never quite forgiven me

he does sing talk, that is why he is great

beer.

thank you.

i guess one person's sing talk is another person's jazz flute

all sing talk is prey to some jazz flute

i think the jazz flute works BECAUSE of the sing talk.

is a "brain tree" a real type of tree? a medical term? I know braintree is a town. if you GIS it, you just get a bunch of clip art. it comes up in actual air as well.

also, nerve_pylon otm

all sing talk is prey to some jazz flute

omg

o.g.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAciq69W5Es

that's more of a talk talk thing

talk talk is into brain trees too

beer?

thank you

the only words i've said today

i haven't spent a lot of time with "have fun with god" but "ride my dub" is pretty great, those spacier middle tracks on "dream river" are better suited for the dub format than the folkier tracks that open and close the album

I love the cover painting. Apparently it's by someone named Paul Ryan. Can anyone link me to a page that actually is about that Paul Ryan and not one of the 500 other artist named Paul Ryan?

http://www.paulryan-artist.com/html/my-home.html - I think he is Australian. Really wonderful painter

I prefer his landscapes over the rest of his work though

yeah he's fucking amazing damn

love his workout photos

link?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFBK7DC28jU

I've belatedly come to Bill Callahan fandom, but I still think of him as a strange lovechild of Michael Gira and Garrison Keillor.

And into the barroom
The barroom the barroom
Barroom Barroom

i listened to this album this morning

i listened to it p much every morning on the ride to work for a whole winter

horse or train

Barroom!

Can’t and don’t want to detach this album from a very specific time in my life. Obviously relatively recent, but still. It’s warm and it makes me feel like drinking a beer as the sun goes down on a Sunday afternoon.

Want a new album.

hopefully another one with 'river' in the title because those are top drawer

I've belatedly come to Bill Callahan fandom, but I still think of him as a strange lovechild of Michael Gira and Garrison Keillor.

Bill Callajham slowly ossifies before our ears.s

yea I'm ready for a new album

Still feel vaguely embarrassed about the time I saw him at a screening of his documentary and I caught him in passing and said something useless like “Hey, I love your work and thanks for doing this” and shook his hand with a totally gross, sticky hand that I recently spilled beer on.

i've never gotten into this one

Bill Callajham slowly ossifies before our ears.s

Summer Painter is still a damn masterpiece

Totally. I live in some of these songs.

Where the fuck did he disappear really?

It's been a long while since the last album.

didn't he just play a few shows recently? bet there's a new record in 2018.

check the barroom

baroom baroom!

Yeah he's played some shows here and there.

He doesn't even have an official website apart from the Drag City one, is that correct?

he's played a few shows but he also got married and had a kid

Isn't he with H4nly Banks any more? They married some years ago iirc

(oh you mean since the last record, gotcha)

he sure gets the pretty ladies.

Wow had no idea about the marriage n kid

She filmed the 'Apocalypse' docu about him.

Was that ever released? Is it any good?

xp Oh I knew they were a couple, came up at the screening. Didn’t know that it got that serious.

The doc is great, yeah. Assume it’s out in digital/Blu-ray/DVD format.

you can watch it here for a few dollars https://www.vudu.com/movies/#!content/517810/Apocalypse-A-Bill-Callahan-Tour-Film

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)

Bill Callahan talking about about punk and dub and hiphop he listened to growing up in Maryland plus lyrics writing and other stuff in an interview by Joshua Minsoo Kim

https://open.substack.com/pub/toneglow/p/tone-glow-158-bill-callahan?r=2ck8a&utm_medium=ios