Woke On A Whaleheart

Bill Callahan’s songs are like movies where the camera angle is slightly askew and the narrative gets lost to the quirks of the characters. Though dropping the Smog alias he’s recorded under since 1990, Callahan hasn’t changed his approach for this 13th album, but continues with the same lyrically intense and musically unvarnished indie-folk rock that make his lyrics sound both dire and comforting. “From the Rivers to the Ocean” includes violins and keyboards that in another’s hands would sound lush and grand, but here sandwiched between the raw slab of drums and Callahan’s unpretty voice it sounds like it belongs in a cardboard box in the attic. It’s this unsentimental bluntness that’s made Callahan an eyebrow-raiser in the past. Here, he tries a few dance moves. “Footprints” and “Diamond Dancer” have the ingredients to groove, but the rhythms deliberately halt to create an otherworldly alienation. Country music is also skewered (“The Wheel,” “A Man Needs a Woman Or a Man To Be A Man”) with clopping beats and Callahan’s detached innocent bystander vocal delivery again creating a palpable detachment. 

It's the age of green, so Smog had to go. In its place stands a single man, ready to shake your ass...er...make you shake your ass. Either way probably works, I guess. As long as asses shake, Bill will be contented...

Smog man's first release under his birth name is also his least experimental: Anchored by rich string arrangements courtesy of Royal Trux's Neil Michael Hagerty (who also co-produced), the album is a relatively straightforward collage of country, folk, and classic Austin indie.

Since the lo-fi indie-rock band Smog has always been Bill Callahan and whomever he's hanging out with at any given time, it may strike some as odd that Callahan has ditched the Smog moniker and released an album under his own name. But while Callahan's Woke On A Whaleheart shares Smog's rumbly tone and rootsy…

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.

Stepping out from behind the Smog moniker, under which he has recorded for nearly two decades, Bill Callahan sounds on this album to be in surprisingly...