Smog

The rise of Smog, aka Bill Callahan, coincided with the explosion of "lo-fi", the American movement that favored dirty sounds and low fidelity (Pavement, Beck, Sebadoh and company). But it would be reductive to confine this atypical songwriter's work within the fleeting core of rock "trends". His songbook, in fact, possesses that whiff of immortality typical of classics like Nick Drake, Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young and Nick Cave. It's a collage of sonic miniatures steeped in melancholy spleen, revealing his perpetually depressed, solitary mood. In some ways, Smog is truly the Nick Drake of the Nineties, above all for his ability to translate existential unease onto the stave with a touch that's as moving as it is restrained and measured.

"Wild Love" came out in 1995, after the Smog style had already taken shape on the preceding "Sewn To The Sky" and (above all) "Julius Caesar". Backed by a deal with Drag City (one of the most important independent labels in the United States) and the support of an "indie" scene guru like Jim O'Rourke, Callahan perfects his formula across twelve tracks that make up a minimalist watercolor of decadent charm. Austere settings alternate with rhythmic shifts, counterpoints, nervy guitar figures and spectral litanies. The raw, "lo-fi" rock of his early days has fused with a distinctive taste for orchestration, giving rise to a broad, eccentric sonic spectrum. The cello (played by O'Rourke) and the keyboards, in particular, add a sinister touch to Smog's panels of everyday desolation, in a hypnotic blend of chamber music and indie rock.

The opener is an instant gut-punch: the pulsating "Bathysphere" rides on a dark rhythm and a neurotic, vibrato-laden guitar line, poised between "Marquee Moon" by Television and "One Hundred Years" by Cure. The lyrics are one of Smog's typical desperate soliloquies, with the protagonist dreaming of living in a diving bell on the ocean floor, among eels and silvery swordfish, isolated from the world; but "he can't swim" and his father will kill the dream ("when I was seven/my father said to me you can't swim/and I never dreamed of the sea again"). It's almost a parable of the agoraphobia that afflicts Callahan, of his inability to relate to a world he doesn't feel part of. Propelled by an obsessive, relentless rhythm, Smog delivers his aching "I want to but I can't" in an exhausting atmosphere, fueled by choruses and guitars.

The intensity doesn't let up in the 80 seconds of "Wild Love", a brief interlude steeped in a spare cello melody over which Smog intones his cry of pain: "Wild love/ somebody shot down my wild love", while the strings sketch out a second melody, accompanied by ethereal chimes. The mood grows even more sinister on the following "Sweet Smog Children", with an unsettling music-box tinkle, minimalist keyboard figures and faint background noise; the ideal backdrop for some of the album's most aching, dreamlike lyrics ("Sweet Smog children/ I just want to touch you/ like the invisible man/ to be untouchable/ like only a child can"). Increasingly lost in the void of his existential malaise, Smog raises to the heavens the solemn hymn of "The Emperor" with the solitary pride of a hermit, by now light years removed from earthly troubles.

If three simple piano chords are enough to give shape to the melody of "Limited Capacity", with the unsettling "It's Rough" Callahan also proves he can build complex arrangements, elegantly blending the funereal drones of a string section, the tangle of three guitars conversing with one another, and the energy of a drum machine. The anemic bard of sadness manages to regain some vigor, if only for a moment, on the neurotic rockabilly of "Sleepy Joe", where the "sleep" in question is that of a guinea pig in a hibernation experiment. But it's two bona fide ballads that lead the listener back onto melancholy's dark path: the fragile "The Candle", accompanied by faint guitars and humming keyboards, and the fatalistic "Be Hit", steeped in bitterly sardonic humor ("Every girl I've ever loved has wanted to be hit/ and every girl I've ever loved has left me because I wouldn't do it…").

It's the prelude to the record's masterpiece: the orchestral apotheosis of "Prince Alone in the Studio", a sublime showcase of Smog's compositional gifts at the crossroads of pop, rock and chamber music. The mood is majestically decadent, with melodramatic strings winding sinuously around guitars pushed to excess, in a long symphonic crescendo made even more feverish by the pomp of the percussion. Such dramatic sonics are offset by an ironically "nonsense" lyric, in which Prince (the Minneapolis musician himself…) prefers a solitary guitar session to the company of girls who want to have sex with him ("it's four a.m./ and he finally gets that guitar track right/ and it's better than anything any girl could ever give him/ because Prince is alone"). The album closes on the nursery-rhyme notes of "Goldfish Bowl", its tight arrangement acting as counterpoint to a slender melodic frame.

A master of spectral, funereal atmospheres, a bard of solitude and disenchantment, on "Wild Love" Smog crafts one of the most dazzling hidden gems of the Nineties, proving that even on a shoestring budget, rock can produce complex and evocative compositions.

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09/11/2006