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viewing 1 To 19 of 19 items
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2LP
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DC 859LP
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Double LP version. "'And we're coming out of dreams / And we're coming back to dreams" is the first thing you hear Bill say as you remake your acquaintance on YTI⅃AƎЯ. Right out the gate, he's standing in two places at once: meeting up with old friends behind the scenes and encountering them on the record, finding himself coming round the bend and then again as someone else on down the line. Like the character actor he played on Gold Record, writing stories about other people, telling jokes about everyone, and in singing them, becoming the songs. Bill's got a full band sound going on this one, with him and Matt Kinsey on guitars, Emmett Kelly on bass and backing vocals, Sarah Ann Phillips on B3, piano and backing vocals and Jim White on drums. Jim and Matt sing on one song, too, and some other singers come in, too. Bill plays some synth here and there, and Carl Smith drifts in and out of the picture with his contra alto clarinet, as do Mike St. Clair and Derek Phelps on brass. Somehow in between them all, you might think you hear the distant sound of a steel guitar. And you might -- but you might not, too. In this company, Bill continues his journey, tunneling underneath the weathered exterior of what seems to be and into the more nuanced life everything takes on in the dark. With Bill's voice making the extraordinary leaps and bounds that measure the lives of the songs, the band follow him through passages that seem to invent themselves; other times playing with deeply soulful grooves and/or desperate intensity, as these moments come and go. Time passes, triangulating the encounters that went into any one record with two out of any three others, all of it made flesh, new constitution, in our stereo speakers. If every album is its own life, it stands to reason that they're invariably passing in the night. Cascading images flowing from the stream of consciousness. Turning like pages from the journal, unspeakably personal, then suddenly become tall tales, like a book pulled off the shelf, completely unbound. Bill's lyrics strain at the lines on the page, not content to separate the printing of the fact from the myth or be confined to ink on paper. On YTI⅃AƎЯ's inner sleeve, alongside his lyrics, Bill celebrates the 'exhilaration and dread' of cover artist Paul Ryan's paintings."
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2LP
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DC 747LP
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2019 release. "... Bill's now writing from somewhere beyond his Eagle-Apocalypse-River headspace, and Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest is very much its own beast. The songs are, by and large, shorter, and there are more of them. It took almost all of the previous three albums to add up to that many. Plus, twenty's a lot of songs! But again, it goes a lot deeper than that. After Dream River, Bill's life went through some changes. Good changes -- marriage and a kid -- but afterwards, it was suddenly harder for him to find the place where the songs came, to make him and these new experiences over again into something to sing . . . While sorting it all out, he worked on songs every day -- which meant that for a while, there were lots of days simply confronting the void, as he measured this new life against the ones he'd previously known. It informed the shape of the album. Moving gradually from reflections upon the old days in 'Ballad of The Hulk' and 'Young Icarus' to the immediacy of the present moment in 'Watching Me Get Married' and 'Son of the Sea', Bill traces the different life lines, casually unwinding knotty contradictions and ambiguities with an arresting stillness. The sense of a life thunderstruck by change infuses Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest -- the songs wander from expressions of newfound joy and great contentment to other snapshots, considerations of the not-joy that we all know. Unsettling dream-images and mythic recollections are patiently received; the undertow of the past is resisted, pulling against it instead into the present, accepting revolutions of time and the unconscious as a natural flow. These transcendent expressions are wedded translucently to the music. Acknowledging the uncertainty in which the songs were assembled, Bill went to the studio alone, unsure if he could find what he was looking for with a band riding along -- because who knew how long it would take? This allowed the fluidity of his song-thoughts to be laid down with the right feeling. Once there was guitar and vocals, the other parts came. Matt Kinsey's guitar partnership is an essential relationship within the music, as is Brian Beattie's acoustic bass -- but also, Bill found himself overdubbing parts himself for the first time in many years, which lent the songs an episodic drift, as if he's passing through rooms while singing. In it's final mix, Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest glows incandescent -- an entirely acoustic arrangement, sounds and stories shifting seamlessly, almost like one big song made of a bunch of new stories -- the kind that only Bill Callahan thinks to sing..."
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Cassette
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DC 859CS
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Cassette version. "'And we're coming out of dreams / And we're coming back to dreams" is the first thing you hear Bill say as you remake your acquaintance on YTI⅃AƎЯ. Right out the gate, he's standing in two places at once: meeting up with old friends behind the scenes and encountering them on the record, finding himself coming round the bend and then again as someone else on down the line. Like the character actor he played on Gold Record, writing stories about other people, telling jokes about everyone, and in singing them, becoming the songs. Bill's got a full band sound going on this one, with him and Matt Kinsey on guitars, Emmett Kelly on bass and backing vocals, Sarah Ann Phillips on B3, piano and backing vocals and Jim White on drums. Jim and Matt sing on one song, too, and some other singers come in, too. Bill plays some synth here and there, and Carl Smith drifts in and out of the picture with his contra alto clarinet, as do Mike St. Clair and Derek Phelps on brass. Somehow in between them all, you might think you hear the distant sound of a steel guitar. And you might -- but you might not, too. In this company, Bill continues his journey, tunneling underneath the weathered exterior of what seems to be and into the more nuanced life everything takes on in the dark. With Bill's voice making the extraordinary leaps and bounds that measure the lives of the songs, the band follow him through passages that seem to invent themselves; other times playing with deeply soulful grooves and/or desperate intensity, as these moments come and go. Time passes, triangulating the encounters that went into any one record with two out of any three others, all of it made flesh, new constitution, in our stereo speakers. If every album is its own life, it stands to reason that they're invariably passing in the night. Cascading images flowing from the stream of consciousness. Turning like pages from the journal, unspeakably personal, then suddenly become tall tales, like a book pulled off the shelf, completely unbound. Bill's lyrics strain at the lines on the page, not content to separate the printing of the fact from the myth or be confined to ink on paper. On YTI⅃AƎЯ's inner sleeve, alongside his lyrics, Bill celebrates the 'exhilaration and dread' of cover artist Paul Ryan's paintings."
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CD
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DC 859CD
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"'And we're coming out of dreams / And we're coming back to dreams" is the first thing you hear Bill say as you remake your acquaintance on YTI⅃AƎЯ. Right out the gate, he's standing in two places at once: meeting up with old friends behind the scenes and encountering them on the record, finding himself coming round the bend and then again as someone else on down the line. Like the character actor he played on Gold Record, writing stories about other people, telling jokes about everyone, and in singing them, becoming the songs. Bill's got a full band sound going on this one, with him and Matt Kinsey on guitars, Emmett Kelly on bass and backing vocals, Sarah Ann Phillips on B3, piano and backing vocals and Jim White on drums. Jim and Matt sing on one song, too, and some other singers come in, too. Bill plays some synth here and there, and Carl Smith drifts in and out of the picture with his contra alto clarinet, as do Mike St. Clair and Derek Phelps on brass. Somehow in between them all, you might think you hear the distant sound of a steel guitar. And you might -- but you might not, too. In this company, Bill continues his journey, tunneling underneath the weathered exterior of what seems to be and into the more nuanced life everything takes on in the dark. With Bill's voice making the extraordinary leaps and bounds that measure the lives of the songs, the band follow him through passages that seem to invent themselves; other times playing with deeply soulful grooves and/or desperate intensity, as these moments come and go. Time passes, triangulating the encounters that went into any one record with two out of any three others, all of it made flesh, new constitution, in our stereo speakers. If every album is its own life, it stands to reason that they're invariably passing in the night. Cascading images flowing from the stream of consciousness. Turning like pages from the journal, unspeakably personal, then suddenly become tall tales, like a book pulled off the shelf, completely unbound. Bill's lyrics strain at the lines on the page, not content to separate the printing of the fact from the myth or be confined to ink on paper. On YTI⅃AƎЯ's inner sleeve, alongside his lyrics, Bill celebrates the 'exhilaration and dread' of cover artist Paul Ryan's paintings."
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LP/DVD
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FTF 046LP
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"This strikingly shot concert documentary follows enigmatic Drag City singer-songwriter Bill Callahan on a two-week tour from California to New York. For the past 25 years, Callahan has cultivated a legacy as both a pioneer in the lo-fi movement and one of the country's finest troubadours. It is an austere and beautiful portrait of both the musician and the multifarious American landscape."
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CD
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DC 571CD
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"Dub is a spiritual, abstract, visceral, mystical thing. Finite and infinite at the same time. Deeply rooted in the earth and embracing outer space. Don't be fooled by names, dub has come and gone. Dub is a ghost, a duppy. A duppy of a childhood guppy. Flushed and thriving in the sewers and the swamps. Here you will find versions of the Dream River songs that have been killed and resurrected, spilling tales of the other side of life in a language conceivable only if you let yourself be taken there."
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LP
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DC 571LP
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LP version. "Dub is a spiritual, abstract, visceral, mystical thing. Finite and infinite at the same time. Deeply rooted in the earth and embracing outer space. Don't be fooled by names, dub has come and gone. Dub is a ghost, a duppy. A duppy of a childhood guppy. Flushed and thriving in the sewers and the swamps. Here you will find versions of the Dream River songs that have been killed and resurrected, spilling tales of the other side of life in a language conceivable only if you let yourself be taken there."
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CD
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DC 553CD
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"Cabin crew, prepare for landing. Gliding through low altitudes, Bill Callahan has set his sights on the runway. It is 2013 and he's ready to land again, with a full cargo for the people down below on earth. From way up high, everything looks so small. But then you land and it swallows you whole. You disappear into the little models, and the trains keep rolling by. And the lights go on and off again. And the trucks on the highway, bound for parts unknown. Dialed into the mindset, the Dream River instrumental crew man a hovercraft that bears the songs along, humming deeply with bass and percolating with the abiding resonance of hands drumming on skins, the lively popping of claves. Guitar strums fan into blooms of smoke, sliced through by other guitars taking other forms -- shards of mirrors, plumes of ignition, telephone wires, snakes and ladders plunging through the depths of the sky. The musical modes are exquisite, aquatic; shifting in delicate but deliberate undetectable time as Bill's lyrics wander from yard to yard."
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LP
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DC 553LP
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2023 repress; LP version. "Cabin crew, prepare for landing. Gliding through low altitudes, Bill Callahan has set his sights on the runway. It is 2013 and he's ready to land again, with a full cargo for the people down below on earth. From way up high, everything looks so small. But then you land and it swallows you whole. You disappear into the little models, and the trains keep rolling by. And the lights go on and off again. And the trucks on the highway, bound for parts unknown. Dialed into the mindset, the Dream River instrumental crew man a hovercraft that bears the songs along, humming deeply with bass and percolating with the abiding resonance of hands drumming on skins, the lively popping of claves. Guitar strums fan into blooms of smoke, sliced through by other guitars taking other forms -- shards of mirrors, plumes of ignition, telephone wires, snakes and ladders plunging through the depths of the sky. The musical modes are exquisite, aquatic; shifting in delicate but deliberate undetectable time as Bill's lyrics wander from yard to yard."
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12"
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DC 570EP
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"We don't know what this is. The tape arrived in a battered cardboard box. 'It's the single', Bill said, sounding slightly annoyed but later claiming he wasn't. The usual low blood sugar excuse. One of us hung up. It was Bill. We called back to get the details and maybe suggest he eat something. 'I am,' he replied. We couldn't hear any chewing. 'Goat cheese.' Nice. Turns out it is two dub versions of songs from the forthcoming Dream River LP. A 12" dub single to preview the non-dub LP. Hm! We are intrigued. 'So you can feel it before you know it.' Bill said. Do you say something about Donald Sutherland in one song? One of us hung up. Again. With flashing echo, this one's a macka!"
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CD
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DC 450CD
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"Essentially an ensemble recorded live in the studio, Bill Callahan's Apocalypse is the corpus delecti. Something happened here! If tape is like meat, this record is the whole hog! No cuts! Delectables and guts! In the opening salvo 'Drover,' the cattle is herded. Everyone is in this roundup -- this is the big one! Listeners! Laughers! Pundits! Wags! Haters! Hausfraus! Mr. Memory and Mrs. Future! Callahan, riding on the back of his band, corrals them all and guides them single-handedly through the Valley with love and ferocity. 'Drover' is the universal gathering, but 'Baby's Breath' is one man's plot of land. The focus turns again outward, next, in 'America!' Looking at 'the last 100 years,' -- which we reckon is about the narrative age of this LP -- 'America!' is a love letter if we've ever had the privilege to read one over someone else's shoulder. 'Universal Applicant,' then, is the looking deep within. The flame in the mirror. Canyons can look like cartoons even when they are real. Side two begins with 'Riding for the Feeling.' Saying goodbye to a mass, an ice floe. A wave that sweeps away and away and keeps coming back. It is breath. 'Free's' is the song of the truly free, the ones that know being free means being kept by the free. 'One Fine Morning' ends it all. The mountains that create the valleys of Drover bow down. 'Hey! No more drovering!' This record makes us wonder what has really happened in the last 100 years. And what will happen in the next 10. The soul of your country called and left you a message. Seven messages."
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LP
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DC 450LP
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2023 repress. LP version. "Essentially an ensemble recorded live in the studio, Bill Callahan's Apocalypse is the corpus delecti. Something happened here! If tape is like meat, this record is the whole hog! No cuts! Delectables and guts! In the opening salvo 'Drover,' the cattle is herded. Everyone is in this roundup -- this is the big one! Listeners! Laughers! Pundits! Wags! Haters! Hausfraus! Mr. Memory and Mrs. Future! Callahan, riding on the back of his band, corrals them all and guides them single-handedly through the Valley with love and ferocity. 'Drover' is the universal gathering, but 'Baby's Breath' is one man's plot of land. The focus turns again outward, next, in 'America!' Looking at 'the last 100 years,' -- which we reckon is about the narrative age of this LP -- 'America!' is a love letter if we've ever had the privilege to read one over someone else's shoulder. 'Universal Applicant,' then, is the looking deep within. The flame in the mirror. Canyons can look like cartoons even when they are real. Side two begins with 'Riding for the Feeling.' Saying goodbye to a mass, an ice floe. A wave that sweeps away and away and keeps coming back. It is breath. 'Free's' is the song of the truly free, the ones that know being free means being kept by the free. 'One Fine Morning' ends it all. The mountains that create the valleys of Drover bow down. 'Hey! No more drovering!' This record makes us wonder what has really happened in the last 100 years. And what will happen in the next 10. The soul of your country called and left you a message. Seven messages."
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Book
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DC 268BK
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"After years of writing songs and singing them into the space in front of him, Bill Callahan has written a book of words to go out into that space as well. Letters to Emma Bowlcut is just that, the letters from a boy to a girl. It is in fact one side of the story, and as such is a meditation on solitude, at times tracing a relationship but mainly making the expressions of a person's soul secrets that are too difficult to impart face to face. As the first letter says, 'I couldn't talk to you but I had to write to you.' A fiction with a nameless protagonist, Letters to Emma Bowlcut collects sixty two letters from a few seasons in the sun as he reaches repeatedly outwards, addressing himself to Emma whether countering her unseen words or more often, exploring the possibilities of explaining his self. To entertain, to explain, to seduce or induce a reply, all his intentions are bound together in the letters, which come across alternately as diary entries, tall-tale confessionals and yes, letters. Our writer is up to the tasks, sifting the loose details of his day-to-day, giving emotional weather updates, advising, narrating and delivering dry punchlines with incredible timing. Letters to Emma Bowlcut captures the sensual and esoteric qualities of letter correspondence that cannot be duplicated by any fancy digital technologies -- your emails, texts, and the IM. Damn all this modern convenience! There is something in the time it takes the post to deliver and the object that eventually arrives that evokes an intimacy, a passion; a desire to be known and an opportunity to present oneself in the internal fantasy of everyday's secret internal dialogue. To paraphrase an old adage of the entertainment industry, when fact meets fiction, print the legend. Where comedy meets poetry, print the pros." 80 pages; soft bound; cover price: $12.98.
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2LP
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SN 016LP
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"Finally! The Smog live album everyone always wanted for years and years has finally reached the public just in time to be a Bill Callahan record instead. Doesn't make a bit of difference -- Smog classics ride alongside Callahan hits with the same unforgettable gait. Rough Travel For A Rare Thing was recorded in Melbourne, Australia on November 8, 2007, at a club called The Toff. Which I think is a slang term for snob. Like, 'that bleedin' toff is a poofta.' In fact, the club was called The Poofta in the '80s. Australia's been good to Bill. They like him and he likes the ocean that surrounds them. Oh, and he likes them too, of course. And of course, they like the ocean, too. They are water people and he's a water person. It makes for good touring and killer live show recordings, as you will soon see. The show sold out in a matter of hours, which Bill's minders delightedly reported to their star, in order to get his spirits up for the show. They needn't have bothered -- Bill loves playing live, whether in front of sold-out houses or almost sold-out houses. In any case, it was a moment to remember when the band walked into the venue for the first time. Bill was like, 'Cool! There's a bar in my dressing room. Which way to the stage?' Then he found out he was standing on the stage. The place was small, I tell ya. Small. When Bill makes his records, he has a certain sound in his head which we hope can be extracted by the time the budget is maxed. The same thing happens on tour but we pay a lot less money for it to happen. For the sold-out tour all across Australia that this recording was taken from, the line-up was: three fiddle players who also sang back up, a drummer without cymbals and a bass player who also played harmonica. The idea was to have a strong, simple foundation with a lot of space left on top to be filled by the mystical strings and voice. And that's what came to pass. Rough Travel For A Rare Thing features Kate Connor, Lara Goodridge, Pria Schwall, Tim Rogers and Lawrence Pike and an audience of probably a hundred. But they were packed in there. And there were lots more out on the sidewalk in front -- honest!"
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CD
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DC 385CD
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"Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle is the new Bill Callahan record. And at the risk of being redundant, Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle is about as beautiful an album as you can expect to hear sung circa 2009. True, it's early yet... but wait 'til you hear this record. Unfolding like a first view of paradise, then a slightly less ecstatic second view of paradise and then finally a glance back over your shoulder at that stupid paradise bullshit, Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle surveys a landscape that grows organically, like the time two people spend together -- or the time one person spends alone (with another). One way or another, it's awfully pretty -- something's clearly making Bill feel like a natural man. And high in the saddle, with a pouch of Big League Chew and nine sweet new tunes in tow, he's riding herd over a diverse bunch of sounds by top-notch players. Sure, there's guitar, keyboards and drums, just like there's always been -- but arranger Brian Beattie brought some old friends back into the picture: violins and French horns. It's been awhile since Bill's gone out dressed up in strings and brass, but they still look good on him -- better than ever, in fact! Plus, recording in the big state of Texas has given Bill Callahan a panoramic sound-screen, filled with verdant and sparkling sounds, all of which allow him access to the depths of expression, allowing a gentle and stirring view of that which we call 'soul'. Singing as personal as ever while still spinning wild yarns and melodic guitar fictions, Bill Callahan's on an idyll we hope won't ever end. We can't grant his wish -- but we sure can love Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle."
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LP
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DC 385LP
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2022 repress; LP version, originally released 2009. "Unfolding like a first view of paradise, then a slightly less ecstatic second view of paradise and then finally a glance back over your shoulder at that stupid paradise bullshit, Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle surveys a landscape that grows organically, like the time two people spend together -- or the time one person spends alone (with another). One way or another, it's awfully pretty -- something's clearly making Bill feel like a natural man. And high in the saddle, with a pouch of Big League Chew and nine sweet new tunes in tow, he's riding herd over a diverse bunch of sounds by top-notch players."
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CD
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DC 332CD
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"You could say this is Bill Callahan's debut album. Although he's sired a dozen albums under the name of Smog, he has laid that name to rest and, well, Woke on a Whaleheart. Another debut. With the same maverick spirit of, say, a Nilsson or a Cat Stevens, Bill Callahan has made an album that is born of no school of music other than what is in his heart and soul. Boasting the propulsive, glittering and classically pretty arrangements of Neil Michael Hagerty, this album manages to bypass the trends of the modern day while shunning retro entrapments. With a mix of gospel backing vocals by Deani Pugh-Flemmings of the Olivet Baptist Church, the incendiary guitar work of Pete Denton, and the honeyed violins of Elizabeth Warren, the music on this album touches on gospel, tough pop and American Light Opera."
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LP
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DC 332LP
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2023 repress, LP version. "You could say this is Bill Callahan's debut album. Although he's sired a dozen albums under the name of Smog, he has laid that name to rest and, well, Woke on a Whaleheart. Another debut. With the same maverick spirit of, say, a Nilsson or a Cat Stevens, Bill Callahan has made an album that is born of no school of music other than what is in his heart and soul. Boasting the propulsive, glittering and classically pretty arrangements of Neil Michael Hagerty, this album manages to bypass the trends of the modern day while shunning retro entrapments. With a mix of gospel backing vocals by Deani Pugh-Flemmings of the Olivet Baptist Church, the incendiary guitar work of Pete Denton, and the honeyed violins of Elizabeth Warren, the music on this album touches on gospel, tough pop and American Light Opera."
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CD
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DC 335CD
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"Bill Callahan is the man who used to record under the name Smog. Now he is Bill Callahan. He cut an album with Neil Michael Hagerty co-producing and arranging all the songs last. Bill decided to give people a head's up and a taste of what's to come by releasing a single from the album with an exclusive B-side that comes from the same sessions but won't be on the album. 'Diamond Dancer' is the story of a young lady having an epiphany on the dance floor while dancing alone. 'Dancing all by herself and not minding,' as the song says."
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