fakejazz.com

How does an amazing artist with a 15 year long legacy follow up his best album yet? With an album that sounds pretty similar and not quite as ambitious. Oh, and he changes his name. But it's not too much of a change. He went from "Smog" to "(smog)" then back to "Smog" now he's just "Bill Callahan" but I'm sure in every single review it will be written as "Bill Callahan (Smog)". This album, Woke on a Whaleheart is a bit less drop down on your knees amazing than A River Ain't Too Much to Love, but it grows on you just like every other Smog album. The one song that will have you on your knees is "Sycamore" with its great Stax Records-sounding chorus, thanks to backing gospel vocals by a member of the Olivet Baptist Church choir. The whole sound of the album builds from the Willie Nelson-inspired country and western sound from the last album, but with Neil Michael Hagerty doing many of the arrangements, his garage sensibilities bring the sound out of the 70s outlaw country Big Willie style into the 50s/60s Nashville sound. The move towards more of a Nashville sound is an interesting fit for Callahan; his choruses aren't really his strong suit. Take the album closer "A Man Needs a Woman or a Man to be a Man" which takes a chorus something like what Elvis might have sung, but puts a jokey, sensitive new age guy spin on it. I was so lukewarm on the chorus that I almost missed out on the amazing verse, relating setting off fireworks in the day to missing a lover. Elvis would have never come up with this shit. Callahan has always had two methods of being clever. First and foremost, he is able to make prose that is beautiful and convey so much imagery (pulling a few examples out of this album, "the river groped us/made us think of sex" from "From the Rivers to the Oceans" and "where the footprints end/we must have flown" from "Footprints"). Second, he's not afraid to take a weird risk, whether it's making the joke chorus or using a children's choir (like on Knock Knock). Another risk he takes on this album is adding vocal cues in "The Wheel." In other words, just before he sings a line, you hear him speaking it, like he's reminding himself of the words. At first it just seemed too weird, but man is it effective.

Bill Callahan at Amazon & Insound