Bill Callahan
Apocalypse

Now don't make me out to be the die-hard fan of Bill Callahan, don't imagine me scratching the window of the record store waiting for the arrival of the latest studio work from the one who once called himself Smog.

None of this: as happened with the previous “Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle,” I approach listening to this “Apocalypse” with relaxed delay, with the awareness of not seizing the release of the year, but with the certainty of being in front of a good work. If I end up being the only one here reviewing (with relaxed delay) an artist like Bill Callahan, it's just a coincidence, although I keep wondering why others don't do it, when we are talking about an artist with an illustrious past, a substantial following, an artist who today finds himself living a second youth amid the muted crackle of applause from critics and fans.

“Second youth” (artistic) which in truth corresponds to a “first old age” (biographical): a phase that sees our “Smog-no longer Smog” embarking on a brilliant singer-songwriter journey that distances him from the indie imagery of which he was for years a fundamental interpreter to project him into the ranks of contemporary American singer-songwriters.

“Apocalypse”, from 2011, does nothing more than coherently reprise the steps taken with the work of two years ago: work that managed to surprise more than one insider for the maturity that the artist demonstrated in shedding the guise of the eccentric indie-rocker to introduce himself in the modest ones of the sophisticated singer-songwriter.

Undoubtedly less heterogeneous than its predecessor, but no less inspired, “Apocalypse” further refines the outlines of Callahan's new artistic incarnation, bringing him to a new level of formal balance, definitively eliminating those “rock” residues belonging to the past that had still “soiled” that intimate singer-songwriter style, the definitive artistic landing of an author who continues to walk his path in total devotion to the themes of his own interiority.

Even though Callahan's Apocalypse, undoubtedly relegatable to an individual dimension, is reconnectable to that of an entire country, the United States of America: a country worn out, suspended between a difficult present and an uncertain future, a condition that pushes the author to seek comfort in himself, in the past, and in the traditions of his land, in absolute aversion to that global world that until recently was touted as the model to pursue at all costs.

The three opening tracks, “Drover,” “Baby’s Breath” (masterpiece), and “America!,” move precisely in the paradox of a man who sings of himself and, singing for himself, ends up singing also for the land that gave him birth, because he is America, and America’s problems reflect and reshape within him. And already in these three tracks, we find condensed the moods of the whole album, as well as the ingredients that make up the multi-faceted artistic vision of the author (so in the first we find Callahan suspended between melancholy and western epic, in the second an incurable romantic Callahan, in the third a nonchalant, ironic, and sarcastic Callahan). It is the ability to synthesize (an effect of greater focus on his artistic vision and the increased awareness of his means) that characterizes this album which, also due to its contained duration (only seven tracks, for forty minutes, ten of which are spent solely on the concluding track), we can define as a real “gem”, crafted in every detail, starting from the beautiful cover.

As mentioned earlier, “Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle” was a real surprise (a pleasant surprise) for admirers of Smog (and not), a work inspired and embellished with arrangements that enriched and diversified an album that knew how to shine for its contents. If, at times, however, Callahan seemed to lose control of the helm, producing a heterogeneous album that, while living on flashes, could not renounce any of the impulses that had inspired its author's pen, already from the first notes of “Drover” we understand that Callahan, while retracing his steps from the same premises, arrives at a more mature and cohesive dimension: simple but effective arrangements, sounds and instruments better blended than in the past, all in the service of an increasingly personal songwriting, but not for this less determined to devoutly immerse itself in the glories of American folk tradition, with that pinch of Nick Cave that makes everything more captivating: it’s impossible, in fact, not to think of the Australian artist hearing the baritone murmurs opening the piece, soon followed by the acidic lashes of a guitar that throughout the album will oscillate between folk and blues, without renouncing electric embroidery that will, however, not destabilize the essentially acoustic setting of the work.

But even though this “Apocalypse” appears to us in an overall more minimal form than its predecessor, the emotional spectrum explored is as complex as in the past, showing us a versatile artist capable of surveying the most varied states of mind, all however converging in the bitterness and disillusionment of one who accommodates an inner motion that seems to want to distance itself from its own I to lead to a deeper, uncontaminated, pure I; to lead to a spiritual arcadia made of honesty and respect for oneself and for others; to get lost in symbolic prairies, in imaginary mountains of an idealized America a mirror of what one would want to be: a path that not by chance takes on the apocalyptic outlines of a “pagan rite”, of a cathartic journey called to lead the restless wanderer out of his existential discomfort (“With the TV on mute/ I’m listening back to the tapes/ On the hotel bed/ My my my apocalypse” recites the paradigmatic “Riding for the Feeling”), a necessary step for reconciliation with oneself (the whistling, the bucolic flute, the jazzy Sunday morning cymbals of “Free's”), a step that finally returns the “freedom to be.”

“The freedom to be.” “To be free in bad times and good/ To belong to being derided for things I don’t believe/ And lauded for things I did not do”: to the nearly ten minutes of “One Fine Morning,” to the distant guitar phrasings, to the fluttering piano, to Callahan’s warm tenor tone is entrusted the honor of summarizing, retracing the stages of this latest existential journey (almost as if one could speak of a concept with its coherent development), a bland wandering apparently without a destination, a grazing in search of nemesis in unspoiled lands.

It's his Apocalypse. But also his rebirth. More personal than this is impossible.