Bill Callahan Woke on a Whaleheart (Drag City)

"Well, I could tell you about the river, or we could just get in" seems to typify Bill Callahan's mood throughout his official solo debut, Woke on a Whaleheart. The album's first track, "From the Rivers to the Ocean", introduces us to Callahan's new take on an old vibe by showcasing little pieces of everything he'll bring to full bloom as the album unfolds. As Callahan croons, utilizing an uncharacteristic verse-chorus-verse approach to what sounds like a love note to Joanna Newsom, violins wind down a scale against a trotting piano. All this while Neil Hagerty's schizophrenic guitar emerges from the shadows--just as Callahan admits his mind's inability to wander--sounding very (and perhaps oddly) Albini: metallic, angry, frustrated. This moment is capitulated by the repeating of a tender moment that might expose itself to you much slower on an older Smog album, "It's hard to explain what I was doing or thinking before you ... Have faith in wordless knowledge."

Woke on a Whaleheart isn't a collection of love songs, though. Callahan isn't one to deny what has worked for the last 17 plus years. The songs are still deadpan, dark and devious, and he still wanders through them more like a poet than a songwriter, but that has always been the charm. That being said, fitting in nicely with the church choir elements of the tunes are moments that can only be described as faithful and full of hope. "There's sap in the trees if you tap 'em" resonates at first as being particularly un-Callahan, but then again, "The seas have blood if you map 'em", and besides, he's recounting something someone else told him, he leaves it to us to decide if he learned.

Musically, what makes Woke on a Whaleheart work is the the more obvious inclusion of elements that have always (though more subtly) appeared in his work: devotional choruses by Deani Pugh-Flemmings, rich guitar strumming odes to Johnny Cash ("A Man Needs a Woman Or a Man To Be a Man"), bluesy swells and ominous bass lines weaving in and out of the songs like the good old days of the Rolling Stones ("Diamond Dancer", "Footprints").

The most noticeable difference between this album and previous full-lengths is the obvious release Callahan has given to his accompanying musicians. Elizabeth Warren's violin warms each and every song in which she appears, whether she's attacking sharp staccatos or sweetly swelling over one note patiently. Hagerty's arrangements utilize acoustic guitars that twinkle and twinge, never wearing out their welcome. The guitar work on the album is perhaps what is most appealing and impressive: a machinist's crackling chords in "From the Rivers ... " is replaced by a pair of kissing acoustics in "Sycamore", playing off each other and functioning like a pair of harmonizing voices, picking up where the other left off. One of the most brilliant moments on the album is the quiet appearance of an acoustic guitar, playing with some subtle flourish, with only 30 seconds left in "Night". The piano and violin create the slow-moving backdrop to Callahan's slow-moving progression through the lyrics with a little help from a xylophone, and suddenly (but softly) there is a hopeful little sound, helping carry the weight of an otherwise heavy song.

Throughout, Woke on a Whaleheart's guitar work exposes not only a variety of influential genres (almost textbook old-time country in "The Wheel", gospel choir struts complete with crisp tambourine in "Day", sprawling George Harrison-ish crescendos in "Honeymoon Child"), but never overshadows Callahan's dark but hopeful lyrics or the rest of the assembly. The key to Woke on a Whaleheart is in the small details. The piano's appearance as both a repetitive time-keeper and a painfully minimal backdrop to lyrics like "We do not know how things work, We do not know where you go in the night, through the door that holds you", the low surge of an electric power chord amidst violin and piano, the blatant Sunday devotional lyrics and loose-string bluegrass strumming, violin that splits its personality between Soundtrack to Creepy Walk in the Woods and Ode to Lonely Man Following the River Home: all of these elements work seamlessly together to complete an album that thrives on its own subtlety.

At times, the album reminds us a little of Cat Power's The Greatest, mostly because that album saw Chan Marshall openly embrace the sound that she'd always sort of taken from. She didn't just write her rock and roll blues, she got a blues band to back her up. Suddenly her arrangements and moods appeared clearly, and she glistened in how well it worked. And it worked. Similarly, Callahan has openly adored his roots in country, blues and the great American song, moving out of the subtle intimations and into the more explicit. And it works. The album isn't a collection of songs written from different genres, it's a collection of Callahan songs that could hardly be more Callahan, for those who have been listening all the while.

[Bill Callahan at Drag City]
[Bill Callahan MySpace]
[Bill Callahan "Sycamore" (mp3)]
[Smog "I Feel Like the Mother of the World" (YouTube)]

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