Bill Callahan – YTI⅃AƎЯ
Masterful songwriter Bill Callahan shares an open-hearted and invigorating new collection of songs
New Bill Callahan is a gift as the nights start drawing in. He conjures a particular melancholy that seems to sit well with the season. It’s an almost meditative experience to listen to Callahan’s music; becoming immersed in his deep baritone, his tender arrangements, the curious tales he weaves.
YTI⅃AƎЯ is the latest addition to the anthology of records that Callahan has collated in the past two decades, both under his own name and his former name, Smog. ‘We’re coming out of dreams as we’re coming back to dreams’, Callahan sings on the opening track, seeming to refer to an emergence from the pandemic that warped our reality. The new record is intended to “rouse” its listeners, Callahan reflected in a statement: rouse kindness, love, anger, anything; “get their senses working again.” It’s certainly an invigorating listen: the music mingles triumphant horns and six or seven voices alongside Callahan’s, so that it's almost choral at times.
YTI⅃AƎЯ meanders through moods, from melancholic to tumultuous to mellow and easy. Often, the songs take time to reveal their true nature: Naked Souls begins as a gentle jazz ballad over piano, gradually building as other instruments join to become explosive. But elsewhere (Coyotes, Natural Information), it is simply joyful listening from the first beat.
Listen to: First Bird, Coyotes, Last One at the Party