Bill Callahan
last graced us as
(Smog)
in 2005 with the graceful and utterly beautiful
country
drenched
A River Ain't Too Much to Love
. A change was apparent when the
Diamond Dancer
EP appeared earlier in 2007 with its funky basslines and raggedy fiddle driving above a chorus of female backing vocalists. It was still him -- that voice is unmistakable -- but there was such a reliance on formal structure and texture, and on the notion of rhythm being placed right up front. It was almost
funk
and western.
Callahan
may have had a
lo-fi
aesthetic, and dug himself into it deeply, long before most had even toyed with it, but on
Woke on a Whaleheart
, he leaves most of that behind. The album starts innocuously enough with his rivers theme at the center
"From Rivers to the Ocean."
Folksy, languid, it's almost pastoral as a piano holds the middle of mix and is juxtaposed with lazily strummed acoustic guitars tracing the limpid
Americana
surface as dulcimers and a trio of fiddles ease in from the margins. The
poetry
in his lyrics create a love song that is timeless and full of displacement. But the very next track,
"Footprints,"
proves that the single was no mistake, strange
R&B
tropes float into the basslines against the acoustic guitars strummed percussively and the ramped-up female backing vocals (all of them on this album are sung by
Deani Pugh Flemmings
), repeated lines, and
Neil Michael Hagerty
's production notions, with fuzzed out guitars and repetitive yet primitive
Motown
-styled string arrangements.
"Diamond Dancer"
is next, underscoring this new, more soulful aesthetic that doesn't abandon
's deep love of old-style
music (as in
country & western
). The shimmeringly masculine and lyrically demented
pop
of
"Sycamore"
is another step out onto the ledge, underscoring that in many ways this is simultaneously the strangest and most accessible record we've had from the man yet.
"The Wheel"
sounds like it was recorded at a backyard singalong. Here is
Neil Young
meeting the dead spirit of
Mississippi John Hurt
as channeled by
James Arness
Gunsmoke
as carried through the voice of
in the spirit of
the Mekons
. And so it goes until we enter the beautifully articulated clomp and clack ad Tennessee
2-step
rhythm of
"A Man Needs a Woman or a Man to Be a Man."
Despite the appearance of that
soul
singing chorus, this is a
tune with all the trappings, moving from acoustic to electric, from shuffle to stomp and back until all that remains is
rock & roll
.
is a new phase for
; it employs all his strengths as a writer of lyrics and music and stretches the canvas of his colorful if sparsely arranged tapestry. ~ Thom Jurek