Bill Callahan

Bill Callahan
Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle
(Drag City, 2009)

There comes a time in many people’s lives when they have to put a stake in the ground for how they’ll choose to move forward on the matter of faith, one way or the other. For Bill Callahan (also known as Smog and (Smog)), the time has come. He closes out Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle, his 13th record and second under his birth-given name, with a long song about the end of his faith in God. When he sings “It’s time to put God away / I put God away,” it’s hard to know how to take it exactly, especially depending on how the listener feels about the topic. But it is Callahan’s way of saying there’s nothing more to discuss about it really, but here’s a 10-minute musical ode to the done deed anyway.

But the disconcerting thing about “Faith/Void” and his sentiment is his inclusion of forsaking lines like “Damning the children / Making the ill just a little more sick.” It’s a “wait a minute” moment with the very power to re-open the whole God debate. Namely, if he no longer believes in God, he probably shouldn’t blame God for the atrocities of the world anymore either. I would imagine he’d have to just rid himself of that line of thinking altogether so that this reasoning would cease to exist. It would be a more believable atheist ode if he reconciled that there’s no divine meaning behind life as he knows it, which he never does here. In fact, he only puts God away, tucked inside some drawer of his mind, filed under “denounced.” When Callahan sings, “This is the end of faith / No more must I strive / To find my peace in the lie,” it sounds like a mantra—as does much of the song, which repeats groupings of words—a tool used in a quest for some form of transformation. And it’s this sentiment that could easily be considered a statement of faith as even atheists choose to believe in something, even if it’s in himself or love or humanity.

No one can blame Callahan, though, for such stark personal statements, however many holes one is able to shoot through them—matters of what one chooses to believe, one way or the other, are just that: Beliefs. But it’s this very welcoming into the personal beliefs of one man that many of us music fans search for. It may be the end of the God conversation for Callahan, but it’s his thoughts on the matter that can allow listeners to be challenged by how they feel about it, too. And that’s a good thing.

Where the record begins and the trajectory it follows may provide more information about how it ultimately ends. “Jim Cain” is a tempered, lightly plucked track with violins carrying the background of the song along as Callahan sings about the curiosities of ordinary things like trees and waves, and how finding the answers to their existence is more complicated than ordinary. “Eid Ma Clack Shaw” has Callahan singing the opening line, “Working through death’s pain,” and asking the question “how?” repeatedly, asking to be shown the way to shake a memory, as piano and violins traipse along an upsetting storyline of loss. As he sings/speaks that “all these fine memories are fucking me down,” it’s lyrical imagery like this that complements Callahan’s off-kilter mood and straight-faced delivery, the moments his fans wait for. In this song, he also claims that love is the king of the beasts, a theme that shows up throughout Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle. “The Wind and the Dove” takes on a more serious and mysterious tone, with opening hypnotic “whoa”s as if Callahan has lost his balance in the stir, as he sings, “Somewhere between the wind and the dove lies all I sought in you.” Interesting. The wind and the dove here could be seen as representations of the Holy Spirit, a thing that is (wind) as a symbol of what could be (purification), but more importantly, the thing in between he’s talking about is love. In “Rococo Zephyr”, a mix of cellos and strings usher in another song about love as he proclaims, “I used to be sorta blind / Now I can sorta see.”

“Too Many Birds” is a look at the forces of nature as they come into one’s life: “One last black bird without a place to be / Turns around in hopes to find the place it last knew rest.” It’s a rather sad song about feeling like an orphan in this world and the relentless search for peace, which most birds can be heard carrying on about at the break of each day. “My Friend” steeps itself in the stark darkness of death by hanging: “Now I’m not saying we are cut from the same tree / But like two pieces of the gallows, the pillar and the beam, like two pieces of the gallows.” He claims love for this person with whom he shares a common need to destroy that which will harm mankind. “All Thoughts are Prey to Some Beast” is one of the most orchestral tracks on the album with one of the most brilliant lines of them all: “The leafless tree looked like a brain / The birds within were all the thoughts and desires within me.” And it’s here where we’re finally introduced to the eagle that the album title refers to, a symbol of honor and bravery, love, and friendship, and while it’s often been noted as a spiritual link between heaven and earth, the Native Americans view the eagle as a way to grant ourselves permission to be free in order to reach the joy that our heart desires. In this song, it’s no different. “Invocation of Ratiocination” is an instrumental track with a title that translates into a calling upon justification for the process of reasoning. And then the album ends with “Faith/Void” putting God away, seemingly a lullaby, a respite in terms of all the tumult that comes before it.

The void explored on this record is deep, intense, and challenging. And while themes of religion abound, it’s also the question of love and the faith that it itself requires that forms the real crux of Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle. This is a record of orchestral folk and somber ballads that remains engaging throughout, both musically compelling and thematically dense, but this time with a bit more resolve on subject matter that’s shown up in his music plenty before. It leaves me already waiting for what’s next from Bill Callahan.

Listen: “Faith/Void” (live) [at thefader.com]

Tags: Bill Callahan, Smog, Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle, Drag City