Album Review: Bill Callahan – Rough Travel for a Rare Thing

This is Bill Callahan’s first live album, and is released on vinyl or download only. So no CD. I’m not convinced of the merits of live albums, or downloads for that matter. However it’s a testament to my contrary nature that I purchased this download.

The music contained within is very strong for the most part, Callahan and his band play a tight set, with selections from the last Smog album – A River Ain’t Too Much To Love, and others reaching back as far as Wild Love. The concert took place before Callahan’s last album so nothing from that slab of genius in this set.

Our Anniversary opens the set, which is a strong song based on a repeating guitar pattern. The pace picks up with the toe-tapping Diamond Dancer, which takes a simple refrain and an acoustic guitar and combines them to great effect. Bowery is slower, building up gradually. Bill sounds in great voice here, and there’s something in the melody (and maybe in the lyrical content) that reminds me of Tom Waits.

There is a prominent fiddle right throughout this album which is something of an acquired taste, and it’s never more prominent than on Held. For anyone used to the original Smog version on Knock Knock this will take some getting used to as the electric guitar riff is replaced by the aforementioned droning fiddle.

More successful are some of the later tracks, like In The Pines (which sounds fuller than the original version), Cold-Blooded Old Times (with a touch of Gomez in the guitar riff!) and Rock Bottom Riser. The album finishes up with Bathysphere, which also works well in this context.
All in all it’s a nice-sounding album but inessential in my opinion.

Album Review: Smog – Wild Love

This is one of Bill Callahan’s earlier albums. Released in 1995, it’s notable for the fact that cello features in a few of the tracks. The opening track Bathysphere, is a kind of creepy song about how when he was seven he wanted to live at the bottom of the sea, which is real “shut me away from the world” stuff. The title track follows. It’s just over a minute and a half long and it continues the same vein, the only line being ‘wild love, somebody shot down my wild love’, sung with unbearable tension over harrowing cello.

Many of the tracks are under 2 minutes long, though some are little more than dodgy experiments (Sweet Smog Children, The Emperor, The Candle) with strange plinks and plonks, scraped strings. Limited Capacity has a touch of Arab Strap about it, without the vulgar lyrics.

It’s Rough is a slightly more substantial song, albeit based around 2 chords on an electric guitar. Sleepy Joe roughs things up a little with distorted guitar over a piano led song. It’s quite repetitive, like a lot of the songs on this album.

Be Hit is a good little tune, strummed on a barely in tune acoustic guitar, a bit like Beck in his acoustic moments, though the subject matter is disturbing (girls wanting to be hit, and they left him ‘cos I wouldn’t do it’). Prince Alone in the Studio is either very weird, hilarious or a combination of these. It’s probably the most dramatic song here with a descending guitar line and careful pauses for effect after each line, and definitely the longest at seven minutes. He’s helped by backing vocals from Cynthia Dall, and the track even has a false ending! Though it’s definitely not Smog’s greatest collection of songs, there’s a strange ramshackle charm to it.