anticipate APOCALYPSE, the new bill callahan record

Apocalypse is a seven-song set that was recorded live in the studio. Apparently, the collection features raw, off-the-floor takes with “No cuts! Delectables and guts!”

The western theme runs whole hog in the press release, describing the ol’ timey ways in which Callahan crafted the album.

“Callahan, riding on the back of his band, corrals them all and guides them single-handedly through the Valley with love and ferocity,” it says of his new tunes.

A canyon-travelling album, Apocalypse rounds up a number of cuts that speak of days long past, and will have you wondering, “What has really happened in the last 100 years.” Sounds kind of rustic.

Apocalypse tracklisting:

1. “Drover”
2. “Baby’s Breath”
3. “America!”
4. “Universal Applicant”
5. “Riding For The Feeling”
6. “Free’s”
7. “One Fine Morning”

3. “America!”

*registers anticipation*

i think it should be anticipated in a big way. i did that with whaleheart, picked it up on release day and took it back to the store the day later ("oh bill", i said, despondent), although i like it now.

kinda wish the record was called riding for the feeling

Yes, I am looking forward to this.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lhux4vWeNj1qdzqjso1_400.jpg

at this point I pretty much leave a spot on the year-end list for Callahan as soon as I hear he's going to release an album

i am not so much a 'lyrics guy' but i think i would buy bill callahan lps, now, just to see where he's at. i remember after woke on a whaleheart had been going around and around awhile, hearing to family is all you can do. like it's genuinely going to assist my day to day life to have this kind of thing to listen to for reference.

at this point I pretty much leave a spot on the year-end list for Callahan as soon as I hear he's going to release an album

― five gone cats from Boston (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, March 10, 2011 3:35 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark

me too

new song!

http://downloads.pitchforkmedia.com/Bill%20Callahan%20-%20Baby%27s%20Breath.mp3

not sure about that track.

i like it! it grows as it goes on. it actually kinda reminded me of recent joanna newsom stuff, in some of its slight detours, the way it holds together. i heard the first side of this record; the sound is sorta akin to that santa maria cover he did a while back. it has some of the stomp he has when you see him play, maybe compared to the composure of the last record.

i can definitely see that it may click for me at some point.

i've only heard it sort of in passing but it unfurls. the buzzy, loose, electric-guitar-slingin' setup suits him pretty well. only downside is the approach to songform seems weirdly uninquisative on first listen.

I like it too! It's loose in terms of guitar playing and structure, and there are quite some nice sounding things going on in the background that I haven't identified yet.

this leaked. am psyched. will buy.

btw that's a marmot in the background

feelin this

(only half way thru so far)

I am LOVING "America!"

i watched david letterman. in australia

Captain Kristofferson
Buck Sergeant Newbury
Leatherneck Jones
Sergeant Cash

What an Army
What an Air Force
What a Marines
America!

that song sounds like filler to me.

kind of funny though

Do you mean judging only by the lyrics? Have you heard the song? Because it's really great and unlike anything Callahan has done. Not filler at all. It's got this propulsive guitar / rhythm thing that makes it sound like it was produced by The Bomb Squad.

don't really know if i'm into this album :( i love callahan but every once in a while he puts out an album that just leaves me cold, and i think this might be one of those. still can't get into "woke on a whaleheart" at all either. though i didn't like "rain on lens" at first and it grew on me eventually so maybe this one will just take time.

i still have never really taken to 'rain on lens' although i did eventually go back and realize it wasn't awful like i thought. i liked 'whaleheart' way better than 'eagle' but i'm happy to wait on the latter.

totally agree with n/a esp. on the rain on lens U-turn. i'm actually totally gutted that i don't love this. the tack i like most is "Riding for the Feeling" which is the one that sounds like it could have fit most comfortably on "...An Eagle". i wasn't looking for a re-run of that album, though, i was excited by the title and actually anticipating something a bit MORE different.

so this callahan is coming out 5 April now, right?

It's out now, on CD, with the LP to follow in a few weeks. Release got brought forward because it leaked.

Do you mean judging only by the lyrics? Have you heard the song?

dude i heard the album. "america" just seems kind of a half-assed, a few good jokes and that's it. it doesn't develop (lyrically or musically).

i still can't really get into rain on lens but supper, which a lot of folks seem to have slept on, is his best IMO.

+ it doesn't sound anything like the bomb squad. it sounds like something from knock knock, though.

i still can't really get into rain on lens but supper, which a lot of folks seem to have slept on, is his best IMO.

supper is him at the top of his game imo. so tightly controlled.
i just listenened to the first side of this, to preserve some suspense for getting the LP, & get the knock knock thing - like america as no dancing or whatever. i'm still super excited, ilx ambivalence forthcoming. jed: it's been a bad year for you!, underwhelming weerasethakul & smog.

"Supper" is definitely one of the best. My favorites of his albums are the ones that exude warmth, I don't really know how else to describe it. Supper, A River Ain't Too Much to Love, and Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle are the big three in terms of warmth for me. Though with Supper part of it might just be the nice red-orange album cover.

listened to Supper again this morning and it's one of his funniest albums. it has lots of jokes.

one of my favorite bill callahan lines is "i never use doors no mores"

all his albums have a mix of warmth and ironic detachment, no? -- that's one thing that makes him interesting. that said, i know what you mean about e.g. "feather by feather" and "guiding light."

some of recent songs that are nominally inspirational or sincere are so straightforwardly platitudinous that you have to imagine he's taking the piss a little bit. he's very hard to "read" though...

also is this his prog album or something? seven songs, averaging almost six minutes!

i never use doors no mores"

my favourite on that is the following line, "i never use stairs, just trees" which is a v vivid image and amusingly ridiculous. are you talking about woke on a whaleheart with the "straightforwardly platitudinous" thing? i remember a quasi-religious theme on that record which stuck in my craw a bit although i don't know that album well enough to go into any detail and, in fact, i don't think i'll ever return to it. i thought the faux-country thing he was doing there was direction at the time of the name change which is why "... and eagle" was such a surprise. i should have know well enough that he doesn't do "directions", i could fully see him making another dour and angry record like "rain on lens" soon.

yeah there are a bunch of those songs on whaleheart but some on eagle as well, no? and on river.

i don't think i'd ever heard a bill callahan song before, but i just heard "baby's breath" and it's great. i like how it gives the impression of looseness, with all the little time & feel changes, but it's still really well-produced & arranged.

then i listened to a couple songs from his previous record and they didn't grab me the same way (honestly i didn't give them much of a chance though).

Apocalypse seems a lot looser in general than his other recent albums, but if you like "Baby's Breath" you might like the rest of it

just now listening to this (totally behind, i know!): http://3voor12.vpro.nl/speler/luisterpaal/44622033#luisterpaal.44622033
sounds really good! i like the loose vibe. "free's" kinda sounds like van morrison!

also is this his prog album or something? seven songs, averaging almost six minutes!

j. newsom influence finally showing itself in the world.

http://eagleflieswiththedove.tumblr.com/post/4064333234/bill-callahan-smog-animal-concordance-2011-edition

missed the lion in Eid Ma Clack Shaw

Listening to this now and enjoying it. I like that he's getting more dynamic with each release.

anyone read the SFJ article?

yeah i thought it was pretty eh

seemed weird to mention Fred Neil and Merle Haggard as references but not Leonard Cohen? trying to keep it all american i guess.

agree with the resonant frequency article on pfork that this album sounds amazing.

sorry my daughter typed that last part.

heard a story about an old show when people were hollering for requests, he'd been silent all night & then stepped up to the mic to say:

is anyone willing
to die
for their request

that's the best concert banter i've ever heard

i feel like callahan's the sort of ornery dude who'd ask for requests and then systematically ignore all of them.

i laughed every time he said "I Thank You" at the show. classic.
but where DID that guitarist come from anyway?

i think i wrote this on another thread, but after he asked for requests and people were screaming song titles for a couple of minutes, he said "i'm glad you guys don't write the set list."

his funny comment at my show was: "I haven't played here in many years ... but I thought about you ... the whole time I was gone."

he should do a comedy album.

"take my cryptic poeticism ... please!"

Oh yeah, so like I said on the other thread I realized this album is amazing. I actually bought it mainly because the record store clerk was cute and playing it, but it's amazing.

would smog clerk

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/650397224/apocalypse-a-bill-callahan-tour-film

Anyone else pledge? Seems an unlikely subject for a tour film, Bill being famously reticent and all, but what do I know? I just wish there was an actual, you know, DVD. Ah well. I pledged for the mix CD. That's gonna be awesome.

http://americansongbook.org/pdfs/2012/AS-2012-02-08-Callahan.pdf

lol @ Thursday, February 9, at 8:30
tUnE-yArDs

ha that program is classic

So that concert film/road doc is finished. Saw it in Baltimore this past weekend with the director and Bill in attendance. It was quite good! She caught some beautiful footage. Bill played a nice short little set after the screening. I’m assuming there will be a DVD/BluRay release at some point in the not-do-distant future.

#217 of my 1,000 favorite moments on this record:

that quiet, brief laugh he does at 3:56 in "universal applicant" ---- "the flare burned and fell / the boat burned as well, hm!"

bees only swarm when they're looking for a home
...and so i followed them!

#218

"to be free in bad times... and good"

IF this record has 1000 moments, Eagle has 100,000.

Both Eagle and Apocalypse are favourites of mine but out of the two, I prefer the latter - more consistently excellent and for me the lyrics are the best Callahan has ever wrote.

this was the performance that convinced me that "america!" is the highlight, not the goofy outlier, of this album:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwaiE9nZWCk

incredible record and cannae wait for the new one

ne too but i hope it will be better than Apocalypse

nobody does not hope that but we can still be fond of apocalypse all the same

waking up tremulously anxious to hear this every day btw

Apocalypse is his best album.

that's going a little far but there's absolutely nothing wrong w/it

it's not one of my fave callahans but seeing him live on this circuit helped me appreciate it more

i do not generally care for, or at least don't automatically prioritise, shows, but he does something so special, live, i think, like it plays to a strand of his music, to do with timing & tension, that makes it even more itself, in a kinda extra-dimensional way. it becomes ... ultra-smog.

yeah - and more simply for me, you notice how good a guitarist he is, how much he's doing in those economical little turnarounds

it is interesting seeing the new song to know it's another of his kinda woven into a simple, rolling line, like it has the DNA of to be of use or all thoughts are pray to some beast. I think there was definitely a moment (like around a river?) when he seemed to step up & sorta click more with what a guitar could do propulsively, how it could be momentum for him to sing with or else play against, pitching his hesitation against its flow on the well or whatever. I'm curious to hear the arrangements for the new record (which I hear are pretty jazzy/loose), because I generally can't neatly assign a register or style he's working in , now - that he is amid this kinda syrupy late flowering, & playing with these sorta austere & delicate classical sounds seems to mean people are calling him glen campbell or picking up on his mickey newman affection, but it isn't that, to me. I feel like he's doing everything very minimally & then dressing it up well.

he's always been kind of a minimalist, arrangement-wise, and he's always been good live with these kind of steady vamps whose dynamics shift in subtle ways. i've admired this about his live shows since... probably the red apple falls era. he's just got better since.

"it is interesting seeing the new song to know it's another of his kinda woven into a simple, rolling line"

you mean the song he played live in the NYC park?

i'm not sure it will sound the same on the record. maybe it won't be as simple.

no, sure. but that it's a reducible, cyclic thing, though, right? i was trying to find an old youtube of him playing all thoughts, solo, the same kinda thing, & can't. i'm sure it'll be dressier on the record, but i think he is doing something kinda structurally minimal anyway.

yea i'm really excited about this new record. i don't know why but i'm imagining it to maybe be like the looser stuff on apocalypse (e.g. universal applicant or free's), perhaps b/c as schlump said there is some talk about the arrangements being a little jazzy/loose.

anyways i generally do fall into the camp that apocalypse is his best record so far. definitely his most consistent. and i've totally gone to appreciate "america" is a great feature of this album. not the highlight, for me that would probably be "one fine morning." but i really have a hard time picking the highlight because as i mentioned upthread this album has 1000 moments of brilliance and is all around just spectacular

i hope it WON'T be like Free's or Universal Applicant. i'll abandon the ship if that will be the case.
(i hope it will be his Aja lol!)

riding for the feeling is my personal highlight of Apocalypse, (maybe because it sounds like an Eagle track, which i adore)

riding for the feeling is wonderful

the song or the act itself?

Still sounds wonderful to me:

http://devonrecordclub.com/2014/09/20/bill-callahan-apocalypse-round-71-toms-selection/

I made a YouTube playlist of every live performance of "America!" I could find: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR4bkk16IAsi9_3BnQVB-SKtU956b5rsU

The first video is from a show I was at.

I don't really know why I did this, except that seeing the song performed live really opened it up for me. The album version is great but it's so heavy live.

you should make a supercut of every time he speak-sings "Leatherneck Jones"

What if Jenny Hval's "Apocalypse, girl" was a response album to this one

DC 450 oh, oh

This was a perfect soundtrack to washing up this evening.

I'm not sure of the meaning of "America", though. (I can't quite untangle the possibly dry humour).

I always took it as weighing the speaker's homesickness and affection for some aspects of American culture against the speaker's knowledge of the historical complicity of white Americans with genocide and imperialism, not really advancing an argument so much as exploring that affective dissonance.

i thought he was just being a smug child of privilege, bragging about chilling ironically carefree indie rock star style in australia, while you sad fucks have to get up and go to work LOL

And when my cattle turned on me, I was knocked. back. flat.
I was knocked out cold for one clack of the train track.
Then I rose, a colossal hand buried, buried in sand.
I rose like a drover.
For I am, in the end, a drover.