PrettyFakes

Friends! Bill Callahan, the artist formerly known as Smog, will be bringing his omnivorous ramble-rock at Chelsea’s this Saturday night (2/16). Callahan spoke with local monthly 225 about the name change, and you can read their conversation here; he also explained the impetus behind his new album, Woke on a Whaleheart, like so:

“I came to realize that I had been dabbling in white witchery; making my own passion plays on stage and in the studio. It’s not a bad racket but I just decided to walk around to the other side of the hill to watch the crucifixion from there. Turns out I found a big, tented hall filled with food, booze and people. A bouncer will throw me out soon enough.”

I hesitate to add to that description. But I will say that Whaleheart has slowly worked its hooks into me over the past few weeks. It’s an assured and relaxed album, and if it lacks immediate jaw-droppers like “Let Me See the Colts” or “Truth Serum,” it works its plentiful charms in myriad subtle ways. The country-folk pastoral that dominated A River Ain’t Too Much to Love is spliced together here with funk and soul on tracks like “Footprints,” a song which gives a wry, romantic twist to the classic bit of spiritual kitsch of the same name.

But the song I find myself listening to over and over again is “Day”: here Callahan is working the genre of the woe-is-society/we’ll-get-through-this-together song a la “What’s Going On,” the sort of song that Flight of the Conchords skewered to hilarious effect in “Think About It.” “Day” comes complete with spoken word intro, soulful background vocals, and some spacey keyboard parts that I want to describe as “earnest.” The woes under consideration in this case are more generalized existential dilemmas—unnamed people are a “sickness on this land” who will steal your life—than specific social issues. Callahan works against listener expectations for what a Bill Callahan song is supposed to do: after all, this is the fellow who wrote “Our Anniversary” (“it’s our anniversary / and you’ve hidden my keys / this is one anniversary / you’re spending with me”), so we assume the sardonic twist is coming. But it doesn’t. After dismissing monkeys as no less piggish than humans, Callahan finds a glimmer of hope in the potato, “striv[ing] toward the light / though it’s as dark as night,” since ultimately it will find that “it is day though.” “Day” is the culmination of the growing optimism of Callahan’s recent work; it’s convincing partly because of the bleakness and bitterness of much of what has come before. By the time we get to the Johnny Cash-style guitar plunking that introduces album closer “A Man Needs a Woman or a Man to Be a Man,” we’re find ourselves in a slightly askew outpost on the borderlands of Bruce Springsteen territory, decorated in bright shades of romantic realism and casual carnality.

It’s not often one of the indie rock illuminati favors Baton Rouge with a visit, so here’s hoping all you nearby readers will turn out for the show. Here are a trio of videos that may or may not give us an idea of what we’re in for. This first one is a performance of “Our Anniversary” from last year:

And here’s Bill Callahan doing “River Guard” solo in the back of a moving taxi. Is there a better Smog song than “River Guard”? Probably not. Is there a better song than “River Guard,” period? That verdict will not be rendered for the sake of thematic consistency.

And what the hell, here’s “Bathysphere,” too:

Past Smog posts on PF:
Review of Supper.
Review of A River Ain’t Too Much to Love.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 at 5:15 pm and is filed under Professor Fury, Red Stick, The Rock and The Roll. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.