Rating: NNNN
Although Apocalypse is Bill Callahan’s 15th album, his third since abandoning the Smog band name, he remains as slippery as ever. He’s called it one of his most personal efforts, yet its outward-looking scope suggests an atypical broadness.
Over seven patient, slowly unfolding compositions, he sparsely mixes country, folk and, in one strange instance, funk to examine America, “where everyone’s allowed a past they don’t care to mention.” Gradually, frontier imagery gives way to self-examination. Even the “apocalypse” referred to in Riding For The Feeling turns out not to be the military pressure mentioned in the earlier America! but rather a pile of demos left on his hotel bed.
Like the best singer/songwriters, Callahan is an English major’s lyricist, and by deftly blending the personal, the political and the mythological, he again leaves us plenty to pore over.
Top track: America!
