Bill Callahan @ Mono, Glasgow, 27 Feb

Why exactly Bill Callahan chose to play what is effectively his album release party here in Glasgow is never exactly clear, and you’re not going to get much in the way of explanation from the famously taciturn former Smog man. His current tour, a series of instores across the UK playing from his new record My Days of 58, lands him in Glasgow the day it comes out. You’d be hard pushed to say he’s got his party hat on, remaining the same mixture of zen poise and knowing dourness, but there’s a gently celebratory air to procedures, particularly because the new record is quite so good.

There is something tantalising about having someone who has more than a few classics scattered across the last three decades only play his new record, but Callahan manages it brilliantly, particularly given this is the first time most of the audience have heard the majority of these songs. Alone with just an electric guitar, a one-man-band’s two-piece drum kit and his uniquely sonorous voice, he’s on strong form, stripping back the more percussive sound of the new record to the kind of weightless Americana he’s perfected over the years.

Opener Why Do Men Sing is a gorgeous thing, losing some of the loping energy it has on record solo, but his guitar and his half-sung/half-spoken delivery in that old wardrobe of a voice pools together to conjure something few else are getting close to. The Man I’m Supposed To Be, with its moody arpeggio and gloomy intonation on his own failings, harks back to his Smog days, but feels less like the necessary bloodletting of his youth, instead something harder earned and wiser with a resolve to do something about his ills.

That said, the in-person realisation that Computer does not appear to be a parodic character study, and its ‘drunk uncle complaining about the internet’ is earnest is disappointing, Callahan snarling through complaints about autotune like it’s 2005. But it’s all brought back around by closer Pathol O.G., full of the kind of self-reflective understanding of both himself and songwriting that it gives the feeling it's a song that it’s taken a lifetime to write. It’s a great capper for a brisk but strong performance from an artist who is, and has been for a while, making brilliance look routine.