Smog
Rain On Lens

Four in the morning.

I wake up, kicking at the crumpled sheets. I get up and put on my headphones. Bill Callahan enters my ears in a guise of unsettling sounds, with his timid voice paralyzed by fear, amidst the smoky atmosphere of the first track, with the laconic title of ""Song"". When, at the end of the short piece, he utters the words "Let's call it a day", I realize I will not return to bed. The second track is a controlled whirl that recalls the Eno-like "Third Uncle". Its spoken-sung style gives me chills, especially when he says that "For some or other cause..." with a Reed-like inflection. The cavernous bass peeks in after the line "Have mercy", have pity; while a guitar chord never fully freed from the hand accompanies you to the end of the track. That cavernous bass opens the next track, which starting from a series of repetitive and disoriented phrases, slightly increases the rhythm during the piece, while the voice maintains a terrifying calmness until the end. It is sweeter in the next song, "Keep Some Steady Friends Around", almost dreamy, maintaining balance on a timid vibrato. "Dirty Pants" is a godless song, dead, closed in a coffin and pierced by the sharp vertical noise of a viola. The voice, seemingly calm if not bored, reveals thanks to small vibrations traces of repressed emotions. It is moving, intimate, even though certainly not passionate, like that of a shy lover revealing their feelings from the other end of a phone with a disturbed line. After this piece, many will have had enough and won't feel like continuing to listen even to "Lazy Rain". But this is a record characterized by timid boredom and discreet depression, controlled nervousness and swallowed lumps.

"Lazy Rain" is like an ingrown nail, a window with a broken glass through which snow can enter. It is followed by a lysergic pseudo-country ballad that after a Pixies-like start, or rather like Nirvana's "Francis Farmer", slows down to fade away, just like at a certain point in "Sister Ray" (even the drums, throughout the album, are very Tucker-like). "Live As If Someone Is Always Watching You" is another hopeless song, a bird with one wing only, forced to fly in circles for eternity. If the album had ended like this, it would have been perfect. But obviously, the guy in question likes to make it clear that for him being boring (and not in a negative sense, it's just a way of being... this is the most repetitive album I have [apart from Metal Machine Music] and it is fantastic for this reason (just focus on a goal and achieve it... this man probably wanted to make an album to listen to while it rains inside and you don't feel like trying to change and he succeeded, damn if he succeeded) is not a hobby, but a profession, and then he raises the stakes. First, he gives us the terrible feeling of being back at square one (and if we had never moved?) with a "reprise" of "Rain On Lens". Then he offers a ballad entirely similar to the last ones heard, "Revanchism", giving us the impression that perhaps there is no difference between the morbid indifference of "Dirty Pants" and the apparent carefreeness of "Keep Some Steady Friends Around".

Boredom wins in any case, whatever instrument he picks up, at any time of day, any words he is singing; that mental exhaustion is always ready to clip his heart.