Bill Callahan – Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle
Posted: April 21st, 2009 | Author: Brady | Filed under: Articles About Music | Tags: bill callahan, johnny cash | Comments Off
The cover and title of Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle invoke images of the 43-year-old Bill Callahan loping through the stark countryside on horseback, watching and singing of the birds in his wise baritone. The actual music can be characterized in this way too: the warm string and brass arrangements are careful not to venture too far ahead of a song’s melody or rhythm and Callahan’s voice, as distinctive as Johnny Cash’s, is mixed up front, alone.
Eagle’s lyricism is environmentally considerate too. “Jim Cain,” the record’s opener, finds Callahan turning grimly to the natural world after failing in the material one. “In case things go poorly and I not return / Remember the good things I’ve done,” he croaks, recalling label-mates and fellow self-deprecators Silver Jews. The singers of both groups take poetic pause in the simplest of details, only Callahan is more concerned with carnal injustice than with growing old. “Too many birds in one tree…one last bird without a place to be,” he mourns on “Too Many Birds,” as if he’s endured this same cruelty many times before.
Since Callahan’s musings are the foundation of Eagle, instrumentation is sparse. Most of these songs sound like they were composed on an acoustic guitar and fleshed out by Brian Beattie, whose string arrangements sing and harmonize as well as cushion Callahan’s deadpan delivery. “My Friend” and “Eid Ma Clack Shaw” are the only tracks that are in any sort of hurry, the latter of which is the album’s best song. This a mostly languid work of art, a meditation on the wonder and uncertainty shared by all living things. Whether they shuffle or scurry, all of Eagle’s songs lead you around a different bend than the one you expected.
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