SMOG - Dream River

The only words I’ve said today are ‘beer’

da “The Sing”

Only a great artist like Bill Callahan could slip lyrics like these into a song and not make them sound forced – the ridiculous output of an altered mind that keeps repeating “Beer” and “Thank you”, letting a well-known sobriety betray irony and amusement. If a placid, sly kind of art exists, Callahan is its sorcerer, and on “Dream River” he doesn't ration the artistry he displayed on the previous “Apocalypse”.

The more classic garb of “Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle” may have felt a little tight on Bill, but he pours into this new record a warmth, an emotional investment that led the label to call it his most passionate work yet (the feverish “Spring”, the beguiling “Small Plane”, the comfortable, loose-limbed crooning of “Winter Road”).

Despite the difference in approach and style, there's a certain affinity with this year's Iron And Wine: understated arrangements, vaguely jazzy in places (“Seagull”), over which Callahan's baritone lays down its obsessive mantras, slipping in images and epiphanies with his sagacious muttering.

An expressive self-awareness that filters through every instrumental embroidery on the record, arguably even more sharply focused than on the jams of “Apocalypse” (as on the probing, revelatory “Ride My Arrow”, caught between existential declarations and ornithological metaphors), cementing the aura surrounding him – the Cormac McCarthy of singer-songwriters?

Perhaps too oblique – certainly not a listen free of roughness, despite its benevolent tone – to stir the same emotions as “Sometimes…”, “Dream River” nonetheless knows how to seduce and carry you away, albeit in a way similar to the protagonist of “The Sing”: “looking out a window that isn’t there”.

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27/09/2013