BILL CALLAHAN - "Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle" LP

Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle LP (Drag City, 2022 repress) "Like Woke on a Whaleheart, Eagle is kitted out with the instrumentation-- cellos and violins, French horns, pump organs, electric pianos-- that he's embraced post-Smog. On Whaleheart, such embellishments were rangy and shambling; here they're loosely clenched, as if Callahan built the music to hold him together. Eagle addresses a specific-sounding lost love, but more broadly, it does what every Callahan record does: It takes a long hard look at who he is and what he believes at this moment. As a result, it finds him questioning the truths he discovered on Whaleheart, as when, on "Eid Ma Clack Shaw", he dreams the perfect song and scribbles it down in the middle of the night, discovering in his notebook the next morning the nonsense words of the song's title. This self-portrait is so complex and subtle that it's tempting to skip discussing the actual music, which speaks so eloquently for itself. Some of the