Three decades on, indie songwriting master shows no sign of running out of inspiration
By Ben Wood
A Bill Callahan album is a masterclass in ambiguity. After 30 years writing and singing songs, the ex-Smog man certainly knows what he’s doing. But what is that, exactly? On album number 25, Callahan’s warm, low baritone is as happy joking around (Lake Winnebago’s goofy rhyming couplets) as he is dispensing well-worn wisdom (The Man I’m Supposed To Be.)
Bearded was lucky enough to see Callahan’s Ytilaer (Reality’ backward, y’see) tour live at the Roundhouse (captured on the Resuscitate! album). His stellar band, including Dirty Three drum colossus Jim White, stretched the album’s simple structures into sprawling, endlessly surprising forms. The line-up and improvisatory approach was so inspiring that this, the follow-up record, was recorded with Callahan singing and playing alongside White, before a large cast of collaborators on sax, guitar, backing vox and more added their own colourations. The result is a collection of songs which sound like low-key country-adjacent balladeering meshed with the impressionistic cosmic explorations of mid-period Van Morrison.
Opener Why Do Men Sing is one of several to tackle the album’s main lyrical theme: how does a committed artist combine his loyalty to the muse with a happy home-life? Eve Searls contributes lovely soulful country backing vocals, as she does on several tunes. Callahan displays his talent for a quirky digression as the song recounts a bad dream where premonitions of death are salved by the appearance of Lou Reed ‘all dressed in white’ with some helpful Zen advice.
The Man I’m Supposed To Be resolves to cut the crap and get out into the world, with some killer lines delivered in that deep deadpan register: ‘I’m been living too much in my head / Not loving you enough in our bed / From now on I start living my life / as if the next day I’ll be dead’. His protagonist admits: ‘My biggest fear is not the dying / It’s that I’ll stop trying…’ It is rare that a writer can nail such lyrics without sounding banal – but, like Johnny Cash, Callahan manages it.
Pathol O.G. warns us not to cocoon ourselves from the world, even with the things we love. But amid references to life’s spiritual side, Callahan delights in lyrically wrong-footing the listener: ‘I remember one girl in east Tennessee / where girls in songs always seem to be‘. Stepping Out for Air’s tale of walking ‘Among the Zoloft pines’, on a downer, has yet more killer lines (‘I think I’m gonna rain today‘). Empathy sees the protagonist come to terms with a tricky upbringing to take delight in his children and forgive his father. Computer is a humanist manifesto from an old-school liberal who refuses to be blinded by ideology or in thrall to machines.
Highway Born is a Roger Miller-esque faux-folksy exploration of the pleasures and perils of a footloose life: ‘I was born between towns with the pedal down / How am I ever gonna settle down?‘ This account of a ‘Ramblin’ Man’ is iconically American, albeit with Callahan’s ironic distance baked in as ever. Lake Winnebago is another tune with cowboy hat firmly in place, although the reference to sutras indicates that this cowpoke’s equanimity may be the result of meditation instead of Old West values. Callahan is having fun with line-endings here for sure (‘Fuego/They go/Winnebago‘).
West Texas is another road vs. home song, which quotes Francis Bacon quoting Aristotle: ‘He who is delighted with solitude / Is either a wild beast or a God…‘ Lovers of melancholy will appreciate Lonely City, an enjoyable wallow in sadness. We conclude in a minor key with The World is Still, an impressionist number with atonal flute and a whiff of desert weirdness.
My Days of 58 has a tendency to ramble on occasions, but its creator knows what he’s doing and I guess he likes it that way. Lovers of understated soulfulness, songwriting chops and killer lyrics will have much to enjoy here – while the richness of the music means that every track is a pleasure to listen to. 8/10
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