Bill Callahan: YTILAER [REALITY]

Since ditching the Smog moniker 17 years ago to record under his own name, Bill Callahan has tweaked the elements of his fundamentally lo-fi sound to increasingly sophisticated and pleasing effect. The songs on REALITY juggle and contort folk-rock, grunge, and jazz elements through a basic lineup of acoustic nylon-string guitar and synthesizer, electric guitar, bass, and drums, with intermittent injections of piano, organ, contra-alto clarinet, trumpet, trombone, and backing vocals in arrangements that range from Pink Moon-ish and Harvest-like chamber-folk to thunderous climaxes worthy of God Speed! You Black Emperor. The heart of the music (and the aural center in an airy and kaleidoscopic mix) is Callahan’s deep baritone, at once conversational and melodic, foreboding and comforting. It gives emotional weight to lyrics that unfold at slow and shuffling paces, and hover between narrative and fractured poetry. His rhymes, repetitions, frequent references to dreams, strange images (“Meadowlark Lemon lies within,” “I felt so good, just like sudsy chrome”), and winking wordplay (“It’s a habit of force”) keep you puzzling over their meaning within Callahan’s ruminations on various aspects of the contemporary human and global condition.