http://www.dragcity.com/system/album_products/images/1606/large.jpg?1263169047
a-comin' in march
― Norman Mail (schlump), Friday, 12 February 2010 17:56 (fourteen years ago) link
live, btw
― Norman Mail (schlump), Friday, 12 February 2010 17:57 (fourteen years ago) link
is it new material?
― iatee, Friday, 12 February 2010 18:10 (fourteen years ago) link
seems unlikely given that it's live and he just put out an album a few months ago
― congratulations (n/a), Friday, 12 February 2010 18:17 (fourteen years ago) link
almost a year ago!
― iatee, Friday, 12 February 2010 18:24 (fourteen years ago) link
is old; there was an interview with him around the time eagle came out saying he was mixing the thing:
Our Anniversary 7:13Diamond Dancer 4:00Bowery 5:59Held 5:00Say Valley Maker 6:52In The Pines 5:51Cold-Blooded Old Times 5:38Rock Bottom Riser 7:10Let Me See The Colts 6:54The Well 9:05Bathysphere 5:59
― Norman Mail (schlump), Friday, 12 February 2010 18:41 (fourteen years ago) link
I am a fan of that tracklist.
― Brad Nelson (BradNelson), Friday, 12 February 2010 20:58 (fourteen years ago) link
Also I like how several have two minutes appended to them--broken things with a front of composure stretched to further breaking.
― Brad Nelson (BradNelson), Friday, 12 February 2010 21:32 (fourteen years ago) link
i've seen this dude in concert a dozen times dating back to 1996. he is never less than good. sometimes the long atonal blooze or velvet underground-style raveups are real boring, sometimes they hit the spot.
only two older songs on that list. but happily some stuff from "supper" (my favorite of his LPs).
― by another name (amateurist), Friday, 12 February 2010 22:34 (fourteen years ago) link
is this one solo acoustic? don't know how he's been touring recently ... anyway, tracklist looks pretty a+.
― tylerw, Friday, 12 February 2010 22:35 (fourteen years ago) link
nuh uh, will be with band. i wish it was from a little later, since the line up from the last tour were sweet, drove previously kinda stark a river ain't too much to love songs into the ground. think the last line up had a violinist?, and thor drumming, not sure.
i could swap in the pines for river guard or something but yeah it looks good. cover lovely too.
― Norman Mail (schlump), Friday, 12 February 2010 23:09 (fourteen years ago) link
bill is looking sort of beefy lately
http://www.dragcity.com/system/artists/photos/74/large.jpg?1250785302
― by another name (amateurist), Friday, 12 February 2010 23:35 (fourteen years ago) link
a bit like aged david carradine no?
― by another name (amateurist), Friday, 12 February 2010 23:36 (fourteen years ago) link
http://www.frugal-cafe.com/public_html/frugal-blog/frugal-cafe-blogzone/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/david-carradine.jpg
or not so aged
― by another name (amateurist), Friday, 12 February 2010 23:37 (fourteen years ago) link
best smog look recently was wilderness bill:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3485/3200528911_4dcc5e9ea3.jpg
recent setlists look rad- playing distance
― Norman Mail (schlump), Friday, 12 February 2010 23:44 (fourteen years ago) link
oh god i LOVE distance.
― jed_, Friday, 12 February 2010 23:56 (fourteen years ago) link
"how can something be in any empty box?"
love this dude so much. hilarious.
― by another name (amateurist), Tuesday, 9 March 2010 19:54 (fourteen years ago) link
If...If you...If you could...If you could only...If you could only stop...If you could only stop your...If you could only stop your heart...If you could only stop your heart beat...If you could only stop your heart beat for...If you could only stop your heart beat for one heart...If you could only stop your heart beat for one heart beat.
― jed_, Sunday, January 10, 2010 9:23 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink
otm
― congratulations (n/a), Tuesday, 9 March 2010 19:55 (fourteen years ago) link
― jed_, Tuesday, 9 March 2010 20:30 (fourteen years ago) link
Gil Scott-Heron covers I'm New Here. i don't know what to make of it but it is... something.
http://www.kcrw.com/music/programs/tu/tu100308gil_scott-heron_im_n?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed:%20kcrw/tu%20%28Today%27s%20Top%20Tune%29&utm_term=Todays%20Top%20Tune
― jed_, Thursday, 11 March 2010 23:39 (fourteen years ago) link
lyrics on supper are so sharp and tense and funny and kinda hot throughout
― werewolf congress (schlump), Friday, 12 March 2010 00:03 (fourteen years ago) link
All this talk about Supper makes me want to check it out. It may be the only Smog record I don't own. Just haven't got around to it. My favorite Callahan/Smog record is the one I heard first - Knock Knock.
― musicfanatic, Friday, 12 March 2010 00:30 (fourteen years ago) link
supper is my fave; i am not a big listmaker but it's one of my favourite things that existed in the last ten years.
knock knock is kinda uneven to me; some of the best songs are on there but the slow loren connors jam and the weird no dancing upbeat stuff make it kind of too broad i think.
― werewolf congress (schlump), Friday, 12 March 2010 00:34 (fourteen years ago) link
yeah, the lyrics from supper are fantastic. probably my favorite album as well.
a friend of mine at the time (who was a big smog fan) felt that he was moving into a too-elliptical and -obscurantist direction, but i actually don't think this is the case w/ supper. my friend cited the song butterflies drowned in wine. but that's a really easy to understand and evocative and inventive mashup of two metaphors (butterflies in the stomach/drowning your troubles in alcohol). i think in the last two albums he can maybe be accused of being opaque but i still love him.
i know it's a cliche but i can't think of a better contemporary lyricist. the guy from drive-by truckers is pretty good though their music isn't particular to my tastes.
― by another name (amateurist), Friday, 12 March 2010 00:39 (fourteen years ago) link
Robert Forster's better with tunes.
― The Magnificent Colin Firth (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 12 March 2010 00:48 (fourteen years ago) link
And he's a Callahan fan too.
― The Magnificent Colin Firth (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 12 March 2010 00:49 (fourteen years ago) link
you know, i haven't heard any of forster's recent (meaning past 15 years?) stuff. i'm not a huge go-betweens fan though i do like them. always found something a little too..emphatic around the edges about them for my taste. don't know if i could explain it better. both forster and mcclennan obviously wrote some deathless songs.
not sure how to express this, but although i actually think bill's more of a melodist than he often gets credit for being, i don't think the charm of music is principally about novel or tricky 'tunes'. i mean, the 'hooks' in his songs are often in his wry, often very very funny delivery. he tends to use variations on sort of stock, public-domain-type melodies; and typically his inventiveness comes in terms of the way he varies or suspends or elongates the phrasing. and sometimes in terms of his play with the larger form of the song.
― by another name (amateurist), Friday, 12 March 2010 00:54 (fourteen years ago) link
btw thanks for that link! that's one of the best reviews of any of bill's albums i've read.
― by another name (amateurist), Friday, 12 March 2010 00:57 (fourteen years ago) link
i love "supper" but my favourites of recent albums are this new one and "a river...". it's great that people claim any of the albums to be their favourites but still love another five so much that they can't really decide. i'd be surprised if someone told me "woke on a waleheart" or "rain on lens" were their faves but, unlike other artists, i'd listen again to try and work out why they liked them so much.. and i'd probably end up loving them too.
i agree that he's the best lyricist working now (that i'm aware of) and by some distance.
hm "distance", that's some track.
― jed_, Friday, 12 March 2010 01:01 (fourteen years ago) link
although as a title "rain on lens" is unbeatable. it's incredibly suggestive.
― jed_, Friday, 12 March 2010 01:03 (fourteen years ago) link
I did like Callahan's 2009 a lot, btw.
― The Magnificent Colin Firth (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 12 March 2010 01:07 (fourteen years ago) link
recently i did some design work in the home of a slightly oder english lit academic. on the day i was finishing off i was playing "a river..." and she came rushing through from the next room, where she had been working, to ask me what it was. now she's a bill callahan stan and sent me a text last week saying that she's given up smoking and that the thing that calmed her during a hectic day was the knowledge that she could listen to "too many birds" when her last student had left.
― jed_, Friday, 12 March 2010 01:13 (fourteen years ago) link
older not odder
although perhaps she is slightly odder now that she's a bill callahan junkie?
― by another name (amateurist), Friday, 12 March 2010 01:16 (fourteen years ago) link
i'd say that's a definite.
― jed_, Friday, 12 March 2010 01:18 (fourteen years ago) link
That Forster review is the best thing I've read on the album.
― The Magnificent Colin Firth (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 12 March 2010 01:23 (fourteen years ago) link
she got me back by making me read Henry James (unrelated to the smog incident and obviously the other end of the style scale) and now i'm (four books in) a Henry James stan.
xpost was just reading that review. it's great.
― jed_, Friday, 12 March 2010 01:28 (fourteen years ago) link
Forster touches on it in his review and it always stuns me how Bill can make a simple lyric so evocative.
"i started running/ and the concrete turned to sand"
― jed_, Friday, 12 March 2010 01:30 (fourteen years ago) link
The Spoils of Callahan
― The Magnificent Colin Firth (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, 12 March 2010 01:32 (fourteen years ago) link
i just finished that one, my favourite so far.
― jed_, Friday, 12 March 2010 01:34 (fourteen years ago) link
it always stuns me how Bill can make a simple lyric so evocative
Guns or fireworks are poppingDown in the townA woman is runningA man jumps up and down...I slide in the front seatThe drivers sideTo hotwire and hightail crosses my mindBut still in the drivewayFixed like the stars
I flip on the headlightsAnd go back insideThe climates controlledWhile the battery dies
― werewolf congress (schlump), Friday, 12 March 2010 01:35 (fourteen years ago) link
"clipping the wings of your morning flight"
― jed_, Friday, 12 March 2010 01:38 (fourteen years ago) link
that line makes me swoon.
― jed_, Friday, 12 March 2010 01:40 (fourteen years ago) link
The night will end inSome form of excessPants around anklesToo weak to fully undress
― jed_, Friday, 12 March 2010 01:42 (fourteen years ago) link
Dude is playing two shows at the Hideout (a very intimate venue) in April. Tickets are $20 (benefit show) and I have no extra money at all right now but I might have to go anyways.
― congratulations (n/a), Thursday, 18 March 2010 18:49 (fourteen years ago) link
ooh, what HJ have you been reading jed?
― Ward Fowler, Thursday, 18 March 2010 19:22 (fourteen years ago) link
oh snap i might have to make it for those shows. wish they were on my spring break.
― by another name (amateurist), Thursday, 18 March 2010 22:10 (fourteen years ago) link
Ward - "Washington Square", "The Aspern Papers", "Turn of the Screw", "The Spoils of Poynton" and i'm currently on "The Portrait of A Lady" as well as just having bought the fairly large (and pricy, for a paperback) Penguin "Selected Tales" this looks great but I'm slightly put off by the miniscule type - 600 pages of miniscule type.
― jed_, Thursday, 18 March 2010 23:57 (fourteen years ago) link
huh?
― by another name (amateurist), Friday, 19 March 2010 06:09 (fourteen years ago) link
"Hop on Pop"
― The reverse TARDIS of pasta (Niles Caulder), Friday, 19 March 2010 07:29 (fourteen years ago) link
Uhhh, Mr. Cooder
― bogo jumbo boba (Sufjan Grafton), Friday, 4 September 2020 19:23 (three years ago) link
on first listen i like it more than shepherd in a sheepskin vest but less than most of his other albums. maybe it'll grow on me.
― na (NA), Friday, 4 September 2020 19:35 (three years ago) link
"Pigeons" and "The Mackenzies" feel like top tier BC to me
― bogo jumbo boba (Sufjan Grafton), Friday, 4 September 2020 19:50 (three years ago) link
Listening to this walking the dog tonight and could not stop laughing at Protest Song. That is a funny song. I am not sure how to articulate this but I love how Bill is not afraid to commit to song concept. He has so many subtle songs, many oblique, but most of his albums have one or two peppered in that, while they can be just as profound, also have this air of novelty to them.
― Lavator Shemmelpennick, Saturday, 5 September 2020 04:12 (three years ago) link
step aside son you’re gonna get hoit
― error prone wolf syndicate (Hadrian VIII), Sunday, 6 September 2020 22:41 (three years ago) link
I guess as close as he’ll ever get to chooglin’
― error prone wolf syndicate (Hadrian VIII), Sunday, 6 September 2020 22:42 (three years ago) link
I can't follow any of these stories, they go in one ear and out the other and I'm left wondering what each song is about. I got The Mackenzies but didn't like it much, some good points though. I think I know what he's trying to do (maybe) but can't appreciate it at all.
― Gerneten-flüken cake (jed_), Monday, 7 September 2020 01:20 (three years ago) link
Pigeons is a pretty straightforward story
― Lavator Shemmelpennick, Monday, 7 September 2020 21:54 (three years ago) link
the new one has this awkward feeling of the music being built around the structure of the lyrics, to the extent that the songs don't really flow or even feel like proper songs sometimes
― na (NA), Wednesday, 9 September 2020 17:15 (three years ago) link
I like this album and think "Breakfast" the keeper.
― TikTok to the (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 9 September 2020 18:03 (three years ago) link
has this awkward feeling of the music being built around the structure of the lyrics, to the extent that the songs don't really flow or even feel like proper songs sometimes
― na (NA), Wednesday, September 9, 2020 1:15 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink
this is otm and exactly how I feel about the last few albums
― Paul Ponzi, Wednesday, 9 September 2020 19:28 (three years ago) link
So, Bill & Will re-recorded "Our Anniversary" with Todd Rittman (US Maple/Dead Rider) plopping down some big beefy chunky riffs all over it, and then Jim White (played drums on the original, I just learned) joins John C. Reilly and Tim Heidecker to record their reactions. Not clear if John & Tim had heard it before, but the original is my favorite Smog song and so my reaction was a lot more similar to Jim's.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBYxKpXIh1k
― the burrito that defined a generation, Tuesday, 8 December 2020 23:32 (three years ago) link
Yeah weird. Seems not really like a cover but the just the lyrics grafted onto something entirely different? On the one hand I like the idea of these two really going for it and Will really reaching (!) on the vocal...on the other its missing that circularity that makes the orig.
― early-Woolf semantic prosody (Hadrian VIII), Tuesday, 8 December 2020 23:59 (three years ago) link
...so amazing^
Maybe would dig more if I wasn’t trying to get the same feels
― early-Woolf semantic prosody (Hadrian VIII), Wednesday, 9 December 2020 00:00 (three years ago) link
My sentimonies exactly, this is an entirely different song, lyrics do not a song make, but dang is Will ever belting em, whatever this is. And on second listen I would like to retract beefy and chunky and replace it with harmonically crunchy, that's really more Todd.
― the burrito that defined a generation, Wednesday, 9 December 2020 00:11 (three years ago) link
god love him but Tim and his guitar face :/
― early-Woolf semantic prosody (Hadrian VIII), Wednesday, 9 December 2020 00:38 (three years ago) link
Rittman's feel for getting that Crazy Horse sound out of the band is awesome but the lyrics feel like an afterthought -- like nobody wanted to write new lyrics so they just sang "Our Anniversary," or noticed at some point that the phrases could fit into the jam and did that instead of finding what other story the music might want to tell. One of my favorite Smog tunes in the original, dig the jam they're doing here but as Hadrian says it doesn't really evoke the mood the (excellent) lyrics do
― J Edgar Noothgrush (Joan Crawford Loves Chachi), Wednesday, 9 December 2020 12:20 (three years ago) link
I'm just happy to see John C Reilly jamming out to one of the greatest American rock guitarists of all time
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, 9 December 2020 12:35 (three years ago) link
This may be one of Will's finest vocal performances, the most range I've ever heard him reach for.
― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Wednesday, 9 December 2020 16:51 (three years ago) link
― early-Woolf semantic prosody (Hadrian VIII), Tuesday, December 8, 2020 7:38 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink
Tim is a bit over earnest as a musician and music lover, which is an interesting stark contrast against his persona in regards to comedy. I think he's been a little wrapped up in feeling like a Real Indie Rockstar this past year especially, but I don't fault him! Glad he's having so much fun.
― Evan, Wednesday, 9 December 2020 17:14 (three years ago) link
haha yeah heidecker is definitely "you guys looked like you were having fun up there"
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, 9 December 2020 17:16 (three years ago) link
During the verses Will adopts an almost Robert Plant ca. "Kashmir" tone.
― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Wednesday, 9 December 2020 19:51 (three years ago) link
didn't even realize he had a new one out today. i'll give it a shot but i haven't really connected with anything past "dream river" (maybe a me problem)
― na (NA), Friday, 14 October 2022 15:26 (one year ago) link
https://media.pitchfork.com/photos/62fa6349ecee23939248fbd4/master/w_1600,c_limit/Bill-Callahan.jpg
pretty awful album cover, though that's in character at this point
― na (NA), Friday, 14 October 2022 15:27 (one year ago) link
it's with jim white--big plus in my book
― a (waterface), Friday, 14 October 2022 17:11 (one year ago) link
this is great
― Cinta Kaz is comin' to town (Sufjan Grafton), Friday, 14 October 2022 20:11 (one year ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECckgYq1Qs4
sound in video is bad but... can't wait to see this show!
― fpsa, Saturday, 5 November 2022 01:05 (one year ago) link
Went to see him in Bristol on Tuesday. Fantastic even though he only played three songs I recognised (don't have either of his latest two albums yet). Saxophonist was a great addition and Bill's between song banter has improved since I saw him last (in '94)!
― yugi ex, Saturday, 5 November 2022 13:43 (one year ago) link