Bill Callahan
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TRACK: Bill Callahan makes it seven over ‘Breakfast’
DRAG CITY aren’t too far off the mark when they say that “over the past month, we suddenly love Monday … the best part of waking up is a new Bill Callahan song. He’s given us “Breakfast” today, a song with the ghost of Bill Fay’s “I Hear You Calling” preserved in amber somewhere down in its …
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TRACK: Bill Callahan – ‘Let’s Move to the Country’: Bill out-smogs himself
BESIDES being a songwriter we should grasp close to our chests, we’ve seen time and time again this summer that Bill Callahan has an incredible capacity to surprise. First he goes and pulls a whole new LP out of the hat, Gold Record, laid down quickly and announced unexpectedly. Then – ka-bam! – he starts …
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TRACK: A quintet from Bill Callahan with ‘The Mackenzies’: not a dry eye in the house
IT’S become a lovely little start-of-the-week tradition through the dead centre of this mournful summer: the Monday teasing of another new Bill Callahan track ahead of September’s Gold Record. And today he brings a tale of “The Mackenzies”: the sweetness of the chance encounter with a neighbour never met after his car gives up the …
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TRACK: Bill Callahan makes it a Monday quartet with ‘Protest Song’
BILL CALLAHAN’S ongoing Monday afternoon pledge to gift us a song from his September Gold Record reached its fourth instalment today, with the downhome and evocative porchside “Protest Song”. Today’s is a bluesy, spontaneous and raggy fragment, with the meta-theme of being a protest song about a protest song on the television. “Somebody must stop …
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TRACK: It’s Monday, it’s a beautiful third from Bill Callahan – ’35’
IT’S MONDAY: we’re in the groove now, and we know to expect a little nugget from Bill Callahan, as he previews September’s Gold Record track by track on a weekly basis. The third to be released in this way has everything you need from him. “I can’t see myself in the books I read / …
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TRACK: Bill Callahan reveals second from ‘Gold Record’
AS GOOD as his word, “just like the responsible, trustworthy father you wish you always had” (it says here), Drag City’s premiere gravelly voided heartbreaker Bill Callahan has released the second Monday song from his forthcoming September album, Gold Record. “Another Song” is a wistful call for the real heartwork of love. “Why dontcha come …
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TRACK: Bill Callahan reveals ‘Pigeons’ from new album
IT TURNS out he wasn’t joking. Last week’s announcement of a new Bill Callahan record in September included a cryptic passage, chatty and hyperbolic, stating: “Ten Whole Weeks until Gold Record drops? Why, that sounds like an eternity! “Thankfully, the Gold Record rush begins much sooner than that – if you think of every weekend …
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Album Review : Bill Callahan’s ‘Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest’
Bill Callahan is one of America’s best modern songwriters. Like contemporaries Will Oldham, Damien Jurado, Phil Elverum, and the late Vic Chesnutt, Callahan paints pictures of worlds of long ago in his songs. Touching on emotions and real life so plainly and without much need for interpretation, his dark voice and acoustic-driven songs feel like …
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Not Forgotten: Smog – A River Ain’t Too Much to Love
For the first minute or so there’s nothing but melancholic acoustic guitar and a far away harmonica. It’s moving, deeply moving. Then comes Bill Callahan’s voice, and you’re utterly invested. By the time he released A River Ain’t Too Much to Love in 2005, Callahan has been recording under the identity of Smog since the …