Bill Callahan, the man behind Smog's dark, conflicted narratives, is often critically thought to be "enigmatic"-- mainly because he addresses frequently passionate subjects with dispassion. In that sense, the tag becomes more like shorthand to describe a singer-songwriter who doesn't spill his every weepy desire. But I've never really bought into the idea that Callahan is an exotic, unknowable creature, and I've never bought into the idea that his work has to be inscrutable (or let's be more rock critic-y and say "inaccessible") to be effective.
Even at his least explicit, Callahan's music comes across as an honest assessment of its creator. For that, he's sometimes also labeled a jerk and a misogynist, among other things, but that may be the price of doing business for an artist who refuses to paint himself in the rosy hues of everlasting love or the antique sepia of "heartfelt" loss-- in short, refusing to paint over his own complexity. The existential nature of Callahan's music has been touched on before, as he presents himself allegorically in his albums-- a hash of emotions, desires, and needs, frequently uncertain of the world beyond the nose on his face, aware only of himself and his mortality, and, most crucially, drawing his own detached security directly from that awareness. He gets called an enigma because he resembles a human being in a medium where people are used to seeing caricatures.
And all that is just a way of excusing the kinder, gentler Smog that has settled in on 2003's Supper and now A River Ain't Too Much to Love, Callahan's 12th proper album. The more confrontational sound of early Smog-- the distinct instrumentation and the sometimes sardonic and sometimes nasty edge-- has been blunted, whether by age or simply a desire to not repeat himself. Instead, Callahan relies almost exclusively on acoustic strumming and easy melodies, forsaking much of the biting cynicism of his more highly regarded work. Although not as compelling as his more subversive material, this softening of his sound doesn't carry the negative connotation of an artist losing steam later in his career; Callahan's distinctive baritone and cutting inflection are unchanging and iconic, and show that this sensitive appearance is just one more spin of the kaleidoscope. As Callahan deadpans on "I'm New Here", "I did not become someone different.../ No matter how far wrong you've gone/ You can always turn around."
For the gentleness of its tone, a listen to "Say Valley Maker" makes clear the message here: "Bury me in wood, and I will splinter/ Bury me in stone, and I will quake/ Bury me in water, and I will geyser/ Bury me in fire, and I'm gonna phoenix". It's about transcendence after death, or-- for a man so clearly wrapped up in his own mortality in the past-- one of peace after the tumult of confronting that mortality. On previous records, after tossing a broken bottle into the woods-- frustrated because he couldn't work to open "The Well"-- Callahan-as-Camus might've mused on the inconsequence or futility of the act. Here, he still throws the bottle, but suffers pangs of conscience, feeling sorry "for the doe-paw, and the rabbit-paw," and goes looking for the shards.
Callahan's a bit new to this sort of territory, occasionally tripping over some surprisingly hokey imagery, and it may not suit those who crave the immediate emotional impact of his more tormented work. But, like any other Smog album, it would be incomplete if it pandered to a one-dimensional view of its creator. In that sense, A River Ain't Too Much to Love makes perfect sense. An album that might be superficially seen as inappropriately becalmed, in its own subdued way, feels instead like life welling up where it had once been suppressed, as human as anything Callahan has ever done.
