Further information about the new horse we’ve acquired is delayed pending a Contessa-approved photo. In the meantime, here’s an equine haiku:
Bill Callahan asks,
“Is there anything as still
as sleeping horses?”
Now, I can’t take credit for that; I just wrote the first line. The latter two are from “Let Me See the Colts,” the final track on A River Ain’t Too Much To Love, the latest record from Bill Callahan’s musical alter ego, Smog. “Colts” is also, as it happens, about the prettiest song ever recorded.
River is a pretty great album. The arrangements are spare in comparison to the last album, Supper, mostly just guitar and occasional piano, but with occasional and unexpectedly heartbreaking flourishes—like the sighing background vocals on “Drinking at the Dam,” for instance, or the insistent, rock-and-roll drumming on “Colts.” As the song nears the end, Jim White (the other one) drums like he’s convinced he’s building towards an epic arena-rock climax, and Callahan just quietly refuses to acknowledge him, singing along in what can only be described as an awestruck monotone.
And really, it’s that voice that brings me back to Smog over and over again. Sure, the songs are often beautiful and touching and funny, but many of them would sound ridiculous sung by anyone else. Callahan has a voice that it would be easy to describe as “authentic,” if that word weren’t so fraught with peril. And flimsy and inaccurate to boot: Callahan’s voice isn’t so much authentic as it is authenticating. Whatever ideas it intones seem truer, more credible, or at the very least, less laughable. It’s the same quality that Johnny Cash brings to a song; think about how unbearably pretentious the Revelation rhetoric of “The Wanderer” (the last track on U2’s Zooropa album, sung by Cash) would have sounded spilling from Bono’s lips.
Callahan’s authenticating voice lets him get away, for instance, with lines that would otherwise sound precious and New Agey, life-affirming in the most tedious “Remember Your Spirit” sense. Take the end of “Say Valley Maker,” the second track and the highlight of the album’s first half: “Bury me in wood / And I will splinter / Bury me in stone / And I will quake / Bury me in water / And I will geyser / Bury me in fire / And I’m gonna phoenix / I’m gonna phoenix.” Callahan’s deadpan delivery sells those lines—he sounds optimistic but cautious, as though his need for faith far outstrips his ability to believe. Or, a verse as platitudinous on paper as “No matter how far wrong you’ve gone / You can always turn around” sounds like a genuine insight, simply because Callahan’s voice evokes a speaker who’s gone far enough wrong that turning around is actually a harrowing proposition.
This is not to suggest that a Smog record consists of bad lines salvaged by an interesting voice. Callahan’s a great songwriter, and if he falters a few times—“The Well” wants to be fun, but just isn’t—he more than makes up for it. Lately I like the comical vagueness of his fantasies of rural refuge in “Running the Loping.” He knows who he wants and what he wants to get away from—“To take a wife and no paper”—but he’s got no clear idea of what he’s escaping to: “Oh to live in the country / With a chicken and those other things.” Heck, even “a wife” isn’t just real specific, now, is it? His vision is fuzzy not just at the edges but right at the center, defined by its absences but uncertain about what new presences will fill in the gaps.
Sadly, no nearby dates on the Smog US tour. Ah well.
I remember that one of the first times I’d heard a Smog song was actually on Cat Power’s Matador record What Would the Community Think. She did “Bathysphere,” and I still think it’s a fluttering and pretty little thing.
wait. you have a horse?
Yep. Recently acquired a palomino quarter horse (qh crossed with something, maybe). More to come on that one of these days.
Cat Power also covers a Smog song from Red Apple Falls on her The Covers Record, but since she makes all those covers sound exactly the same, I haven’t developed a real strong opinion of it yet.
” . . . mumble mumble . . . softy softy . . . [inaudible].”
I thought you were kidding, but that’s exactly how the lyrics sheet reads.
That said, I like You Are Free quite a bit—sucker for stabby guitar noise.
[...] mething when I pick it up next week. 5. Smog, A River Ain’t Too Much to Love. Yeah, I wrote about this one already–good, and it keeps getting better. 4. The New Pornographers, Twin Cinema. Th [...]