Bill Callahan (Smog)

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Key tracks:

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  1. All Thoughts Are Pray To...
  2. Dress Sexy At My Funeral
  3. Diamond Dancer
  4. Night

Label: Rough Trade Publishing

Description:

A distinctive, classic songwriter with translucent lullabies and disjointed lyrics.

Bill Callahan, AKA Smog, has been around for a long time - long enough to become one of those artists that enjoys considerable success and a worldwide fan base whilst still retaining for each of his fans that he is their own discovery - like Richard Hawley or Randy Newman for example. He shares more with these two greats- a distinctive, classic songwriting skill with a lyrical focus that forms a stark contrast with his early instrumental work. Callahan writes translucent lullabies with often very poetic images or disjointed lyrics that somehow still seem accessible and with a sense of innocence despite their starkness. "She was dancing so hard, she danced herself Into a diamond" from Diamond Dancer or "We do not know how things work, We do not know where you go in the night" from Night. 

Callahan’s songs are often based on seemingly simple structures but layer upon layer builds them up to their heartbreaking conclusions. His singing is strikingly characterized by his baritone voice and the frankness of his delivery without over-emotional. This music hooks you in and keeps you there. 

For the last two album Callahan has dropped the Smog moniker. ‘Woke On The Whaleheart’ contains some of his happiest, gentlest music and his latest releases (making all kind of "best of 2009" lists) ‘Sometimes I Wish I Was An Eagle’ continues on this new beautiful, more expansive sound whilst continuing to create the kind of intimacy and dry humour his fans love him for. So does the move from Smog to Bill Callahan mean he is more personal, a new less cynical man? When he says "I used to be darker, then I got lighter, then I got dark again"  do we take the man at his word? Who cares. Enjoy the music anyway. One half-suspects he's smirking at us through that rich, Johnny Cash-like baritone.

 

Releases we represent:

  • Woke on a Whaleheart | Album | Rough Trade Publishing | 2007
  • Rock Bottom Riser | Album | Rough Trade Publishing | 2006
  • A River Ain't Too Much To Love | Album | Rough Trade Publishing | 2005
  • Supper | Album | Rough Trade Publishing | 2003
  • Accumulation : None | Album | Rough Trade Publishing | 2002
  • Rain on Lens | Album | Rough Trade Publishing | 2001
  • Dongs of Sevotion | Album | Rough Trade Publishing | 2000
  • Knock, Knock | Album | Rough Trade Publishing | 1999
  • Red Apple Falls | Album | Rough Trade Publishing | 1997
  • The Doctor Came at Dawn | Album | Rough Trade Publishing | 1996
  • Wild Love | Album | Rough Trade Publishing | 1995
  • Julius Caeser | Album | Rough Trade Publishing | 1993
  • Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle | Album | Rough Trade Publishing | 2009

Quotes:

Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle is a record of grand hopes and epic imagery, and powerful, uplifting music--the most accomplished of his 20-year career. Mojo

The music is imaginative like a good dream--not the kind some of his older records intimated, the kind in which you’re walking but can’t move forward. New York Times

While the dewy-eyed mood of his last album, "Woke on a Whaleheart," suggested Callahan's romantic entanglement with Joanna Newsom had turned his brain to mush, this miraculous return to form finds the artist formerly known as Smog losing his girl, but rediscovering his mojo. Observer Music Monthly

Tracks included on the following samplers: