Bill Callahan

William Rahr Callahan (born June 3, 1966) is an American singer-songwriter, who has also recorded and performed under the band name Smog. Callahan began working in the lo-fi genre, with home-made tape-albums recorded on four-track tape recorders. Later he began releasing albums with the label Drag City, to which he remains signed today.

Career

Callahan started out as a highly experimental artist, using substandard instruments and recording equipment. His early songs lacked melodic structure and were clumsily played on poorly tuned guitars, resulting in the dissonant sounds on his self-released cassettes and debut album Sewn to the Sky. Much of his early output was instrumental, a stark contrast to the lyrical focus of his later work. His use of lo-fi techniques was not primarily an aesthetic preference, but stemmed from his lack of resources to make and record music. Once he signed a contract with Drag City, he started to use recording studios and a greater variety of instruments for his records.

From 1993 to 2000, Callahan's recordings grew more polished, with more instruments, and a higher sound quality. In this period he recorded two albums with the influential producer Jim O'Rourke and Tortoise's John McEntire, and collaborated with Neil Hagerty. Callahan also worked closely with his then-girlfriend Cynthia Dall in his early career, and they contributed vocals to each other's albums. After 2000's Dongs of Sevotion, Callahan began moving back to a slightly simpler instrumentation and recording style, while retaining the more consistent songwriting style he had developed over the years. This shift is apparent in albums such as Rain on Lens, Supper, and A River Ain't Too Much to Love.

Smog's songs are often based on simple, repetitive structures, consisting of a simple chord progression repeated for the duration of the entire song. His singing is characterized by his baritone voice. Melodically and lyrically he tends to eschew the verse-chorus approach favoured by many contemporary songwriters, preferring instead a more free-form approach relying less on melodic and lyrical repetition. Themes in Callahan's lyrics include relationships, animals, relocation, nature, and more recently, politics. On the subject of voice in his albums, Callahan has said, "It's usually one character per record. So, the character appears in all or most of the songs on one record and then is gone. Though it makes me feel weird to talk about. Because I don't really think in clear terms of characters. My albums as a whole could be seen as one character with many voices." His generally dispassionate delivery of lyrics and dark irony often obfuscate complex emotional and lyrical twists and turns. Critics have generally characterized his music as depressing and intensely introverted, with one critic describing it as "a peep-show view into an insular world of alienation."

In 2007, Callahan released Woke on a Whaleheart, his first solo album released under his own name. Callahan explained the name change, stating: "I realized that [Smog is] a really ugly word. I realized I'd been going so many years without even thinking about it. I realized I didn't want to be associated with this thing that doesn't even exist. Because a name is a pretty strong thing, right?". He initially planned to release A River Ain't Too Much to Love under his own name but decided against doing so after pressure from Drag City. Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle followed in April 2009. Both recordings were released through Drag City, worldwide. In 2009, Callahan contributed cover songs on four separate tribute albums to Judee Sill, Kath Bloom, Chris Knox, and Merge Records. In 2010, he released his first live album Rough Travel for a Rare Thing, which was recorded in 2007 at The Toff in Melbourne, Australia. Apocalypse was released in April 2011 to favorable reviews. Critic Sasha Frere-Jones called it "my favorite of Callahan's albums, not because it has better songs—those are scattered among at least five others – but because it does exactly what he wants it to do: it conveys an album’s coherence." A tour film chronicling Callahan's 2011 Apocalypse tour was released in 2012.

His followup to Apocalypse, Dream River, was released in September 2013. A dub remix of the album entitled Have Fun With God followed in January 2014. In 2018, Callahan was featured in the Live at Third Man Records series. This was his second live album, and features songs from Callahan's previous three studio albums.

Callahan took a hiatus from making music after the birth of his son in 2015 and for a time he considered quitting music altogether, citing the demands of being a parent. His musical hiatus ended with the release of Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest, on June 14, 2019. It received favourable reviews, with Pitchfork contributing editor Jayson Greene referring to it as a "highlight of his career". His more prolific pace has since returned with the release of Gold Record, in September 2020.