Apocalypse, Bill Callahan’s 2011 album, begins with two songs, “Drover” and “Baby’s Breath” (explored previously on Recliner Notes), that can’t help be read as extended metaphors about the founding and settling of the American West. Those two songs are followed by “America!”, a hilarious accounting of reasons why to love the United States. The humor,Continue reading “Universal Applicant”
Category Archives: Bill Callahan
Drover
In 2011, Bill Callahan released his most critically-acclaimed album, Apocalypse. Recorded in the border town of Tornillo, Texas, the tone of the album is informed by Callahan’s relocation to Texas a few years before as he recalled in a 2022 interview with Uproxx: “When I first moved to Texas, I always felt like I wasContinue reading “Drover”
Eid Ma Clack Shaw
“Eid Ma Clack Shaw,” the second song on Bill Callahan’s 2009 album Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle, starts with minor chords on a piano: An ominous beginning to be sure! Callahan sings the song’s first line a cappella: “Working through death’s pain.” It’s a heavy line to match the foreboding nature of theContinue reading “Eid Ma Clack Shaw”
Jim Cain
In April 2009, Bill Callahan released the second album under his own name called Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle. Asked about the significance of the title by Interview, Callahan replied: “It’s a phrase that I thought of a few years ago, and wasn’t sure what to do with it. I held onto it.Continue reading “Jim Cain”
From the Rivers to the Ocean
After 15 years of releasing music professionally under the name Smog, Bill Callahan put out an album using his own name: 2007’s Woke on a Whaleheart. The shift in names was an intentional act by Callahan as he told Pitchfork in 2007: “I have narrowed my focus with the name change. There is no nameContinue reading “From the Rivers to the Ocean”
Let Me See the Colts
In 2003, Bill Callahan, still releasing music under the band name Smog, put out the album Supper. The fifth track, placed at the heart of the album, is a song titled “Vessel in Vain”: The song opens with the sounds of twin twinkling from the guitar and keyboard as Callahan sings the opening lines: “IContinue reading “Let Me See the Colts”
The Well
In his 1981 essay “On Writing,” the great short story writer Raymond Carver wrote the following: “It’s possible, in a poem or a short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things—a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman’s earring—with immense, evenContinue reading “The Well”
Say Valley Maker
The time before the release of 2005’s A River Ain’t Too Much to Love was a period of transition for Bill Callahan. Looking back on that time, he recalled the following to Stephen Hyden: “I moved out of Chicago to Austin, Texas because I was trying to make some big changes in my life. IContinue reading “Say Valley Maker”
Feather by Feather
From the beginning of Bill Callahan’s career when he recorded under the name Smog until the present releasing music with his given name, Callahan has been signed to the record label Drag City. In the early 2000s, while still using the Smog moniker, Callahan was one of three white male recording artists signed to DragContinue reading “Feather by Feather”
Teenage Spaceship
In the year 1999, the singer, songwriter, and guitar player Bill Callahan had released six full-length albums and a number of cassettes and EPs under the name Smog. Smog was not an actual band, but rather Callahan with an as-needed rotating cast of musicians. Smog’s earliest releases were abrasive and jarring, mixing noise experiments withContinue reading “Teenage Spaceship”
Recliner Notes 