Ich habe gerade eben erst entdeckt, dass unser Held Robert Forster das Album von Callahan schon im Mai besprochen hat (zusammen mit Beware von Bonnie „Prince“ Billy und einem Album der Wagons) – es hat aber auch niemand den Text verlinkt, so weit ich sehe, jedenfalls nicht in diesem Thread.
Robert ForsterSometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle is Bill Callahan’s second album since he dropped the appellation Smog. He resides in Austin, Texas, and his career has taken him from acoustic-guitar home recordings, through electric instruments, band line-ups and recording studios, to the lush instrumentation and widescreen shimmer of his current album. It has been a journey to watch, and the success of Sometimes I Wish comes not only from a strong and pointed set of songs, but from the placement of Callahan’s dark baritone voice in a pool of sound that is sweet and uplifting. The effect is of beauty coating the beast, and is redolent of those terrific late-’60s recordings by booze-ridden, gravel-voiced actors such as Richard Harris and Lee Marvin. Callahan’s earlier wry, monotone delivery did have its pleasures, and seemed to have found a home amid the minimal folk structures of A River Ain’t Too Much to Love (2005). Here, though, he has thrown the dice, artistically and probably financially, and brought in a string section and some lovely guitar playing to enrich the songs and find new places for his voice to go.
Not that Callahan is easy or accessible, a would-be-mainstream artist. There are too many idiosyncrasies layered in his music for him to hope to gain the late-’60s AM-radio success of prime Glen Campbell or Bobby Goldsboro, which in instrumentation and sweep Sometimes I Wish echoes. And that’s the lovely core of this record: the vibrant re-creation of a grand, string-driven and twangy-guitared era of pop playing off against a songwriter happy to croon „It’s time to put God away“ over and over through the verses of a nine-minute song. At heart Callahan is a minimalist, in lyric and in melody; he uses repetition in both so his songs are taut and razor-sharp. On this album the melodies are particularly good, and the lyrics punchier and funnier: „I ended up in search of ordinary things / Like how can a wave possibly be?“ Add the cream of production, and Callahan has made his best album so far.
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To Hell with Poverty