@tina
Danke! :)
Ich tippe es auch nur ab, weil „Faith/Void“ endlich bei mir angekommen ist. Bisher war der Track eher ein nicht greifbares Etwas, was aber gestern Nacht und heute Morgen mehr und mehr an Substanz gewonnen hat. So großartig.
Bill Callahan – Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle
* * * * * (Instant MOJO Classic)As those spellbound by his haiku-like songcraft will know already, Bill Callahan dropped his pea-souper nom de guerre for 2007’s „Woke On A Whaleheart“ – nominally, his first solo venture. That album, made during a romance with squeaky harpist Joanna Newsom, was like spring arriving after perpetual winter. In it’s opener, Bill wondered, „What was I doing with all the thinking before you?“ Elsewhere, he was awed by the industry of wood bees, an eulogised lovin‘ completeness. At last, the smog – and, indeed, Smog – has lifted.
Two years on, sadly the alt-celebrity affair is over. On this solo sequel „all the thinking“ resumes. „I used to be darker“, Callahan croons near by the start, „then I got lighter, and I got dark again.“
As its title implies, though, „Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle“ is record of grand hopes and epic imagery, and powerful, uplifting music – the most accomplished of his 20-year-career. In the late ’80s, Bill was lo-fi. On muffled early casssettes, his funeraly acoustic guitar figures circled like filthy dishwater over a plug hole, Bill’s mordant baritone musing on the awfulness of human relations. After introducing rock’n’roll instrumentation, he’d occasionally riff-rock like the Velvets (Cold-Blooded Old Times, etc.), but his tunes always has speculative, unsettling edge.
Here he’s arrived at a flat-out beautiful sound, in places lavishly orchestrated with strings, French horns, the works. On one track, „Rococo Zephyr“, Brian Beattie’s arrangement evokes a breeze passing over two lovers‘ bodies. On a couple of others, the swell of massed violins exhilaratingly mirrors bird flight in gusty winds.
Now resident in Austin, Texas, Callahan is chasing down the big ideas – nature, love, God – wich have consumed all of America’s greatest writers. „Eid Ma Clack Shaw“ finds him (or a troubadour like him) wondering how to shake off sensual memories of a departed flame; the answer comes to him in a dream, encrypted in the hilarious gobbledygook.
His metaphysical enquiries reach on summation on „Invacation Of Ratiocination“ (pure reason!), where a wordless female voice quavers as if bubbling through water, amid Autechre-esque tech-abstraction. This is a prelude to the 10-minute finale, „Faith/Void“. Here, „all the thinkin“ achieved a kind of victory, as – cue triumphant violins! – Man’s rationality concquers the sham of deity. „It’s time to put God away,“ Callahan sings, ecstatic by his deadpan standards, „no longer must I strive to find my peace in a lie“.
Of course, alle the foregoing teasers remain: How to love? How does a wave start? What are birds are really up to? In pondering these through such sublimic music, even an old grouch like Bill can surely find some contentment.
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detours elsewhere