Product Description

'A River Ain't Too Much To Love' is the twelfth album from lo-fi alt-country pioneer Bill Callahan. Recorded at Willie Nelson's Perdernale Studios in just ten days, the album seesCallahan deliver his dark, unsettling, and witty lyrics over a back drop of acoustic guitars and hushed drums provided by Dirty Three's Jim White. Folk harpist Joanna Newsom also guests on the track 'Rock Bottom Riser'.

Track Listing

1. Palimpsest
2. Say Valley Maker
3. The Well
4. Rock Bottom Riser
5. I Feel Like The Mother Of The World
6. In The Pines
7. Drinking In The Dam
8. Running And Loping
9. I'm Hew Here
10. Let Me See The Colts

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10604 in Music
• Released on: 2005-05-30
• Number of discs: 1

Customer Reviews

Sad and hopeful, slow and deep
I had heard very little Smog prior to picking up this album: a few tunes off Dongs of Sevotion, but not a lot else. And becasue of that the first listen came as a shock. Very slow, very deep-voiced, very abstract... Not normally my bag at all. But I listened again. And again. And agai... well, you get the picture.

Maybe it's just me, but I continue to find this album a contemplative and meditative joy. Every song (with the exception of the tonal departure of Mother of the World) is beautiful, poderous and measured. Every song contains a thought worthy of thinking and thinking further. The album gives and gives, gently and teasingly, perhaps like the rivers that haunt and inhabit almost every song.

'Let me see the colts that will run next year. Show them to a gambling man thinking of the future.' A simple couplet that slow smoulders with the gentle folly of man. And the album is packed with that kind of subtlety. Maybe not for all people, and maybe a departure from the previous Smog catalogue, but, for me, the album is like a journey home through sunless green countryside. Beautiful and sad.

Lastly I'll mention the 'In The Pines' cover. It couldn't be further from Kurt Cobain's harrowed interpretation (which I love), but it couldn't be better for it. Smog's version is the one I find myself singing these days. Maybe it's another reminder that I'm crawling up the ladder of my 30s...?

A river is hard to love
It only takes a minute for "A River Ain't Much To Love" to start rubbing me the wrong way. That's about the point when Bill Callahan starts singing.

I'm all for lo-fi music, and I can stomach what is loosely called "Americana." But Callahan's band Smog is one that doesn't click with me; he sounds too much like a heavily tranquilized Daniel Johnston, minus the rough edges, quirky vocals and endearing folkpop melodies.

"Palimpsest" starts things off on a bad note. A sparse guitar melody, almost ambient in its quiet simplicity, is jarringly interrupted by Callahan letting rip with a bunch of cliches about "winter weather" not being his soul. Follow up with cryptic season metaphors, and laments about folky loneliness: "Like I'm a southern bird that stayed north too long/winter exposes the nests/and I'm gone."

Callahan sticks to that sound for the remaining songs, though he breaks from the minimalist guitarpop in "The Well" and "I Feel Like the Mother of the World." There, we get some driving alt-rock that you can imagine in the soundtrack of an old western, after the bad guys have been duly shot down. But even those songs can't disguise the vocal flaws here.

And really, that is probably what bugs me the most about the latest Smog album: Callahan's voice. It's rough, dusty, gruff and unpolished. In fact, it's so rough and dusty that it's unpleasant to listen to in many places. Lines like "Diving! Diving! Diving! Into the murk..." jerks unceremoniously from the music itself. Heck, he doesn't even sing most of the time -- and when the frontman's speaking voice is not good, it's time to find a new vocalist.

Fortunately, he isn't as bad at creating the music itself. The guitar melodies are spare and strangely pretty, and even a bit eerie at times. Callahan even breaks away from alt-rock long enough to turn out the lush "Drinking At The Dam," a slow, sweet song layered with angelic vocals and some distant strings.

Some pretty minimal melodies make up Smog's "A River Ain't Too Much To Love," and it's easy to love the li'l ditties. But Callahan's gritty voice rips up the slow, sweet feel.

Disappointing
When I read on the domino website that they were calling this smog's best ever lp, i was a little bit dubious....and having listened to it many times now, I still am. BC's lyrics always seemed to have an amusing self-mythologising kind of quality to them, and on records like "Rain On Lens", the production and music is so good that it all fits. But on this album, the songs are not that strong, and the production is pretty dreadful, weak and tinny sounding. Which kind of makes his lyrics seem a bit self-important and delusional. Perhaps a bit pompous even. He's started to believe his own hype methinks....