As a little warm up for his upcoming shimmy about the United Kingdom (and, uh, Israel), Mr. Bill Callahan played a few dates in his new home state of Texas this past week. I was lucky enough to catch him at his Austin date and I was pretty psyched about the whole thing. The Mohawk just might be my favorite venue in Austin and Bill Callahan just might be one of my favorite musicians ever. I crept up close to the outside stage early on; eager to hear a set of songs off the stellar Woke on a Whaleheart . The setlist (totally left out in the open! weird!) revealed the upcoming minutes were indeed to be filled with songs off Mr. Callahan's latest. Also included were Smog classics "Bathysphere" (flipped my shit a little when I saw that one) and "Cold Discovery" (and again) along with a couple tracks off of 2005's transcendent A River Ain't Too Much To Love to close things out. Backing Callahan were Thor Harris (on a pretty rad and variously accoutremented drum kit) and Jonathan Meiburg (on keyboards and cute smirks) of Austin-based, recent Matador signees Shearwater, a girl named Elizabeth on violin, and a bassist with grey hair. I was hyperexcited for the show seeing as how I was in my best sight/sound position for a Callahan show ever. This proved to be bit of a double-edged sword however because, as great as everything looked and sounded, when Bill Callahan looks at you, you kind of feel like dying. The band was surprisingly tight (having, I assume, a fairly cobbled-together nature) throughout the set. "Bathysphere" was an obvious highlight, augmented by Thor Harris's corpulent drumming and the bassist with grey hair's rocklike basslines. "Sycamore" and "Diamond Dancer" are both new classics for Callahan and the band performed them gorgeously. The undoubted set (and, honestly, life) apex was "Cold Discovery." Dongs of Sevotion was not exactly my favorite Smog album but "Cold Discovery" remains one of Callahan's finest moments (I'd love to get "Well, I can hold a woman down on a hardwood floor" tattooed somewhere on my body were it not so seethingly misogynistic [I guess]). Callahan changed the rhythmic structure of the song to the point where I almost didn't recognize it when he began playing it, even though I could see the setlist sitting there in front of me. However, the band is what really lent the song its power. The piano-centric studio version was transformed in something absolutely harrowing, with a squawking violin and ridiculously lumbering rhythm section. The track was extended from its original (fairly lengthy) length by God knows how many minutes but it was still too short. As sinister as the lyrics were before, they were goddamn frightening when I was standing three feet from the solemn man singing them. When Bill Callahan performed "Cold Discovery" that night, it was one of the single greatest songs I've ever seen anyone play live. After that, Callahan still had several songs to round out his set but, while all perfectly excuted and enjoyable, the entire show ended when "Cold Discovery" did.
Due to some sort of scheduling which I think I can only describe as "completely fucked," things moved to the inside stage after Mr. Callahan finished up. I sat around until Austin's best band, The Weird Weeds, finally got set up and going around 1 AM. Much of the audience had (sadly) already evacuated. The Weird Weeds turned in a solid set complete with new material from what can only be an awesome new full-length on the horizon. New song "Red" was the highlight of The Weird Weeds' set; being one of their most straightforward and loudest tunes it was a perfect centerpiece. Unfortunately, their set was sullied by the facts that I was really tired by that point, that Bill Callahan had played "Cold Discovery," and that the sound guy decided to add delay to the band's vocals halfway through the set because he "got bored." As polite as they were about the whole thing on stage, I'm sure none of them thought too well of the sound guy after that. (And seriously: what? What a shitty sound guy.)
These two other bands played but they were boring so I didn't pay attention.
