Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com
Showing posts with label Bill Callahan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bill Callahan. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 24, 2026
Tuesday, December 30, 2025
Monday, July 21, 2025
Wednesday, September 25, 2024
Friday, July 26, 2024
Friday, October 14, 2022
Tuesday, December 7, 2021
Bill Callahan & Bonnie Prince Billy – Blind Date Party – Album Review
Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com
Thursday, December 3, 2020
Sunday, August 30, 2020
Bill Callahan - Gold Record - Album Review
Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com
https://nomoreworkhorse.com/2020/08/30/bill-callahan-gold-record-album-review/
Friday, December 6, 2019
Top 10 Albums of 2019
Article for www.nomoreworkhorse.com https://nomoreworkhorse.com/2019/12/06/top-10-albums-of-2019-killian-laher/
Monday, September 30, 2019
Monday, June 10, 2019
Monday, February 3, 2014
Friday, December 20, 2013
Looking forward to 2014
First out of the blocks will be Mogwai with Rave Tapes, which will be released on Jan 20th. Based on Remurdered, the track released off it so far it's going to be electronic in feel, in a similar vein to their Les Revenants soundtrack.
Mark Kozelek is releasing his first album in, oh, at least five months, this time as Sun Kil Moon. It's entitled Benji and I really hope that's better than it sounds. Based on the acoustic tracks released to date it's up to scratch but not as strong as his last 2 albums. It's due out Feb 11th. In November he is, believe it or not, releasing Mark Kozelek sings Christmas Carols about which I am stunned into silence.
Beck is releasing what for him sounds like a fairly conventional album: Morning Phase on Jan 20th. Apparently it's a follow up of sorts to his downbeat, song-based Sea Change. Bill Callahan is releasing a dub version of Dream River on Jan 21st - Have Fun With God, and presumably God knows what THAT will sound like.
Dakota Suite have been recording with Quentin Sirjacq and have an album, There Is Calm To Be Done due for release in June. Fraser McGowan will most likely release a song-based album as Caught In The Wake Forever some time in 2014. Willy Vlautin's fourth novel The Free is due out in February and at some point his soundtrack to The Fighting Heart may surface.
I neglected to mention the Mark Lanegan Anthology - Has God Seen My Shadow? which is coming out in early January and will have unreleased material on it.
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Top 10 albums of 2013
This list will be more controversial for what I'm leaving out. So no Bowie, National or Queens of the Stone Age:
10 My Bloody Valentine - m b v
Never thought I'd be including Kevin Shields and co in a list like this. This album succeeds by simply doing what MBV are good at. It sounds like it could have come out in 1993 as opposed to 2013, yet it's not dated.
9 Low - The Invisible Way
A remarkably consistent band. This album is more stripped down than of late for them, allowing Sparhawk and Parker's harmonies lots of room to breathe.
8 Bill Callahan - Dream River
Callahan is on fairly opaque form here, and it's an album that I suspect still has to fully reveal itself 3 months on. Still, you can't argue with that voice or his band.
7 Mark Kozelek & Jimmy Lavalle - Perils From The Sea
A brave move for Kozelek to leave his voice completely at the mercy of Lavalle's lush, electronic soundbeds. The end result is an undoubted triumph, unlike anything else in his back catalogue.
6 Chequerboard - The Unfolding
A beautiful guitar instrumental album from John Lambert aka Chequerboard.
5 Boards of Canada - Tomorrow's Harvest
An unexpected return from BoC to produce an addictive soundtrack for dark, uncertain times.
4 Mogwai - Les Revenants
The soundtrack to the TV series of the year, it works beautifully with the programme. But on its own it works really well, pushing Mogwai's music in an understated, keyboard heavy direction.
3 Mark Kozelek & Desertshore
Kozelek returned to a classic guitar, bass, drums combination. There's nothing earth-shattering here, but some of the songs contained are among his strongest in many years.
2 Mark Lanegan & Duke Garwood - Black Pudding
Lanegan show his more rootsy side on a collaboration that echoes his early 90s solo material in a really good way.
1 Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds - Push The Sky Away
Nick Cave and co have had an extraordinary career, yet this album, 10 months on continues to astound, revealing hidden qualities as it goes. Wonderful stuff.
Friday, September 27, 2013
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Album Review: Bill Callahan – Woke On A Whaleheart
Bill Callahan’s first album released under his name in 2007 is a curious affair. Callahan has been honing his songwriting craft gradually as Smog (and also (Smog)), culminating in the dark Americana of A River Ain’t Too Much To Love.
On this album however he experiments with a whole bunch of musicians, instrumentation, backing singers and Neil Hagerty on production. From The Rivers To The Ocean starts with a quiet piano part before morphing into something not too dissimilar from his last album as Smog with Bill’s tar-black vocal coating over a piano-led tune, joined by “blonde violins” (as per the sleeve notes).
A total change of tack for Footprints, a stomping freak-out with barmy backing vocals. It’s quite unlike anything else Callahan has done, as is the funky Diamond Dancer, a more successful attempt at a strutting guitar-dance track.
Sycamore is a more relaxed groove, an easy melody allowing plenty of space for Bill Callahan’s croon, while The Wheel with its slightly off guitar harks back to his Smog days. Honeymoon Child is, well, slinky is the word, a kind of bluesy, funky ballad.
Later, Night takes a pretty piano part in the fashion of early Smog and turns it into a soaring, reflective number. The album finishes with the bafflingly-titled A Man Needs A Woman Or A Man To Be A Man, a toe-tapping, finger-clicking early Johnny Cash style number.
The album has a cluttered, fussy feel, lurching from style to style. An idiosyncratic and intriguing diversion for Bill Callahan.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Concert Review: Bill Callahan – The Academy, Dublin, 5th May 2011
It transpired that this was the first night of Bill Callahan’s tour, conjuring up images of his band receiving a letter in the post from Callahan reading: “Touring Europe. See you at the airport. Bill.”
Sophia Knapp was the support, accompanying her guitar playing with programmed keyboards. Unfortunately it was mostly forgettable stuff, with shades of 80s power balladress (new word!) Pat Benatar here and there. There was an improvement on the aptly titled Nothing To Lose where she ditched the keyboards.
By now the venue was full to bursting, with stifling heat. Bill Callahan cut a stoic, messianic figure on stage, clad in a white suit and bathed in white light as he strummed Spanish guitar with occasional harmonica. Riding for the Feeling was an early highlight. It’s a downright lovely song but it was enhanced here by some wonderful electric guitar from Matt Kinsey.
The band, completed by tie-wearing drummer Neal Morgan sounded comfortingly old-fashioned, and rendered songs like Our Anniversary, Free’s and Jim Cain in subtle, stripped-down arrangements, Kinsey’s electric guitar substituting for strings. Universal Applicant gave Callahan a chance to do his flare impersonation while the song benefited from some lovely guitar flourishes on the coda creating a beautifully laid-back atmosphere, not spoilt by the Bez-from-Happy-Mondays impersonator beside us.
The music created by this threesome was really quite something, with Callahan also showcasing a fine singing voice. Some tracks such as Eid Ma Clack Shaw and My Friend were radically reimagined from their recorded versions and worked well. Bill Callahan found time to dig up Bathysphere from his back catalogue, which concluded his set.
If the feverish retail activity at his concession stand was anything to go by, he sent an adoring crowd home deliriously happy. Indeed I really didn't want it to end!
Friday, April 15, 2011
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