Classic or Dud: Smog

Smog have done some fine songs and albums. But I don't know. I think someone like the Walkabouts taps a vaguely similar vein and does it with more skill overall.

Laura N.

duly noted. laura, could you point out some other musical/dating faux pas for those of us who want to retroformat our collections to make us more appealing to the opposite sex?

I am stranded (after a fashion) in France with only two Smog records, and for numerous reasons have a desperate hankering to soak in the entire lot of them. Seeing as Smog records cost about 20 euro apiece here and my budget for new records is nil, I have come up with a proposal, as follows: Someone on this board makes copies for me of all the Smog albums (or most of them, besides "Knock Knock" and "Red Apple Falls" which I have here) and sends them to me, and in exchange I send them a CD or DVD from France or anything else in that price range that you might want from France.

Interested parties may email me off-board.

""I wanna tell you about a man/You won't find him on your MTV," Smog's singer/songwriter Bill Callahan sings on his first album, 1990's Sewn to the Sky. Though he's actually referring to Jesus, those lyrics apply to Callahan "

????

"on Sewn to the Sky, you can hear every needle used to put him there. "

does that even mean anything?

I hate that place sometimes.

btw -

Aside from "Lize," I think Smog is a borecore super-dud.

mr. perpetua - so off the money that it's hilraious.

here

c_ohara (at) btinternet.com

not at my sign on e mail which is fake.

is it only me who feels as if callahan's music always sound a bit like a parody on the subject,than the real thing?
(same goes with Oldham as a matter of fact)
i'm not saying this as a negative thing btw.i like his music.

Not sure I'm following you. Parody of what exactly? And how? I've heard Oldham criticized as being "ironic", but I don't really think that's totally fair. I guess a bearded Kentuckian covering Mariah Carey is "ironic", but he never does that sort of stuff in a condescending, winking sort of way. Weird idiosyncratic things like recording the old ragged Palace standards with slick Nashville session musicians seem to stem less from "lol" and more "hey, i like this kind of music too, it would be cool to reinterpret my old songs this way."

I'm rambling about the wrong dude, what's this about Callahan making parodies?

maybe irony is a better word to describe it,yes.
what i mean is,that he is obv. influenced by the classic singer/songwriters
but i feel he never sound as serious, or emotionally involved on the music as they were, more like a little wink,a precise and serious gesture to their music,but a gesture still.

I think callahan just approaches songwriting from a very sober, removed sort of place. It's self-aware, yes, and often ironic in that sense ("I am singing a song") but it's in no way unserious.

What was the odd spiky guitar he used up until Dongs (he's playing it on the cover)?

I Feel like the Mother of the World

^^^^^^^^^best song ever, right?

past week or so i've gone from feeling like this body of work is 'okayish songwriter dude' to feeling like it is 'essential American genius'

like it's only just now that i've paid attention enough to notice that he, like, never uses three chords where two will do - i'm not sure if it's real amateurism or entirely a decision - and i was wondering if that changed, when he went from being 'smog' to being 'bill'

past week or so i've gone from feeling like this body of work is 'okayish songwriter dude' to feeling like it is 'essential American genius'

Past two years or so I've gone from feeling like Bill's body of work is "essential American genius" to "okayish songwriter dude" -- exactly the opposite progression.

thotmp

"somewhere in the night" will always be a jam

"I Feel like the Mother of the World" is easily my least favourite song on that album.

Past two years or so I've gone from feeling like Bill's body of work is "essential American genius" to "okayish songwriter dude" -- exactly the opposite progression.

― I just wish he hadn't adopted the "ilxor" moniker (ilxor), Tuesday, 20 April 2010 23:08 (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this seems so weird to me. like, the more i get into this dude, the more i love his stuff. in other words, thomp otm

yeah - my estimation of how good he is rises each year. there are few artists whose work every time I revisit it seems better than it did before, but he's one of them for sure. there isn't one release of his, save maybe "whaleheart," that doesn't always yield new treasures when I come back to it.

as long as you've previously discovered the hagerty-fried treasure of honeymoon child & day then that's an okay statement

and also yes. his oeuvre is more satisfying than most i think; there are these seemingly arbitrary aesthetic choices he makes for each record which leave listeners with lps neatly suited to different smog moods.

always always always classic. listening to him is like being hugged.

O_o

Like being hugged by a really big mouth.

that's ok with me.

like being hugged, awkwardly, by an autistic stockbroker.

I don't think I would mind that too much either. give me more.

this version of ex-con is stunning. its all velvet undergroundy and great. makes me want to hear him do his back catalog in this style.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrYwWNuR5nw

A+

really great

I remember playing the album version of "Ex-Con" for someone at some point and being asked if it was a Lou Reed song they'd never heard. Now it kind of makes sense.

when is this from?

sorry, got it. 2001.

That is great, and I'd forgotten the lyrics immediately before VU fuzzy meltdown section, so that little 1-2 is killing me right now

this was a b-side of a single iirc.

Shasta, Jean jacket and tie - such a lie or good look?

bolo tie ftw

love this song so much

Aside from "Lize," I think Smog is a borecore super-dud.
― Matthew Perpetua (Matthew Perpetua), Tuesday, 9 December 2003 16:52 (6 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

wtf, how wrong can you be

I've only got Doctor Came at Dawn and the Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle one he put out last year. So, what's the best one to get next bearing in mind I prefer the latter LP?

Get his other solo record under his own name.

woke on a whaleheart? thats prob my least fav of his stuff

Me too, but it's probably the closest in tone to his latest album.

Aside from "Lize," I think Smog is a borecore super-dud.
― Matthew Perpetua (Matthew Perpetua), Tuesday, 9 December 2003 16:52 (6 years ago)

A single giggle is produced when I come across tripe like this, reminiscing that all y'all once paid temporary attention to the used-tissue musical opinion of this kook.

thing is Lize is such a bizarre track to single out. i mean the tune is good but it's a fairly undistinguished mid period track.

This sad news of this totally passed me by:

http://pitchfork.com/news/46064-rip-cynthia-dall/

damn, that is very sad. RIP.

i got sick of no smog/callahan on spotify so i burned a cd of all his albums that i have on itunes (i seem to have lost a few in various hard drive crashes) and it's crazy having it on shuffle and just hearing the expanse of what he's done and how it's all really different but all him and each album has some mindblowing songs on it

the in-most-other-musical-circumstances-i-can-think-of-dangerous arbitrary stylistic variations between records - additions of instruments, p dramatic differences in approaches to drumming, use of harmony vox, &c&c - are reliably successful, also

i dunno, there's a coherent long-term evolution in his stylistic approach

I like him, but it's all suspicious, like he's avoiding making errors of taste, consciously, a lot

tryina maaake gooooood

nice to have everything on Spotify now, have been exploring some of my less-explored corners of the back catalog. Currently really enjoying Kicking a Couple Around

has he ever talked about the multiple (like 3-4 songs?) references to "O Superman" across his oeuvre?

I can think of:
let's move to the country

maybe?
bathysphere
the morning paper

what are the others? does this track with your list of songs?

a lot of his stuff does have a New Music/Minimalism bend/flavor – maybe Orourke's influence – which ties to O Superman for sure

Like, to me, this Win Mertens track sounds similar to some of the arrangements on Red Apple Falls or Knock Knock as well (and I know Jim likes this, he played on his NTS show or somewhere else)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4d9xMuEJVg

Yes, all of your examples plus

Say Valley Maker - about half way through "because there is no love..." he adopts the same vocal shift that LA does in "O Superman" when sings "cuz when love is gone..."