I'd bet you my syringe-shaped locket that Bill "(Smog)" Callahan read Camus' The Stranger at an impressionable age. Dozens of his songs begin with lines as piercingly disinterested as that book's laconic kickoff, "Mom died today. Or maybe it was yesterday." In aligning his leftovers for Accumulation: None, Callahan even seems to have aped the why-bother ethic of The Stranger's casually murderous hero, who fired five of six bullets, then figured there's no point in committing to the foggy notion of comprehensiveness.
Why is Smog trudging into the random-comp-that-offers-one-new-song territory of Bon Jovi and U2? What the hell is the organizing principle of this collection? It stumbles all around its eleven-year trajectory like a tranquilized unicorn. Callahan's logic in assembling this disc eludes me-- even though he scrounged up four ditties (a b-side, two BBC sessions, and the aforementioned freshmaker) not included on Pitchfork News' long list of probable contenders. And even that list leaves out the acoustic demo of "Held", as well as Callahan's two songs released as The Sundowners.
I have it on good authority that Smog concerts honor the refrain from Silver Jew David Berman's poem "Cassette County": "anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship." Not that I'd know. I'm sore about how Callahan-in-the-flesh has been running interference on me: the first time he toured the deep south, my then-squeeze and I missed out thanks to a fight straight out of one of Smog's songs, evaluating each other in terms of what we hated about our brothers and sisters. (We holed up in separate floors of the same hotel.) The second time, my wallet disappeared at a gas station, only to later resurface via a phonecall from a "Mr. Lovelady" who said he'd found it in the middle of some street. (He returned the wallet to me with magazine cutouts of women's faces taped over my pictures on three IDs.)
So let me pretend to not be a frustrated Smog-huffer and examine Accumulation: None for what it is: a scabrous chronicle of Callahan's anhedonia that will bring any party down and which is guaranteed to unnerve those fatless freaks on the swim team. The cover art's blurry schooner behind shattered glass sets the tone, and brings to mind the bleak, horizonless sea-and-ship scene that adorns 1996's The Doctor Came at Dawn, whose "All Your Women Things" is akin to this comp's quasi-fetishistic duo "Real Live Dress" and "Little Girl Shoes". "Real Live Dress" allows for further cross-referencing, since it blends the nightmare pluck of The Doctor's "Four Hearts in a Can" with the dissonant backgrounds that leaven 2001's Rain on Lens and the anti-pop irony of "Summer Song", the B-side to the "Sundowners" seven-inch that's a simplistic drum-machine spoof of the booty fad-tunes that end up rocking seasonless roller-rinks. And even my advance warning cannot prepare you for how the last verse of "Real Live Dress" is copped from a certain knight who mixed a lot: Callahan croons, "My Anaconda don't want none unless it's got buns, hon/ Baby got back/ I like big butts."
Accumulation: None draws from the lo-fi, teenage Smog, who sounded-- let's face it-- like a schizophrenic Lou Barlow lost in some deleted scene from Eraserhead ("Astronaut", "Floating", "Hole in the Heart"), the mid-90s Smog, nearly eclipsed by Oldham-ness ("Spanish Moss", country-rock revisitations of 1993's "Chosen One" and 1994's "I Break Horses", featuring Oldham-accompanist Colin Gagon), and finally, the contemporary how-am-I-doing-on-time Smog, who displays a proclivity toward fragmented narratives, and whose steadily yelping guitars could be undergoing genital mutilation. "Chosen One" and "I Break Horses" are especially noteworthy, as Callahan, drenched in BBC reverb, comes the closest he has yet to belting his lyrics, which adds a layer of passion not present in the sneering, resigned originals. Though tame compared to Smog's many songs about infidelity, familial sexual tension, physical abuse, masturbation and death, "I Break Horses" is often cited as prime evidence of misogyny, as he won't "feed," "ride" or "tend to" the beasts of burden, identified as female. "Tonight I'm swimming to my favorite island/ And I don't want to see you swimming behind," he yells, as the piano and drums churn; perhaps he'll soften in his golden years, and turn that island into a prison-themed daycare center.
Elsewhere, we're treated to the limp licks of the hilarious "A Hit", whose sludgy rhythm guitar suggests a pitch-shifted buzzsaw; Callahan expresses his fear of ending up "a Gary Numan," since he'll "never be a Bowie" or "an Eno." A dark new song titled "White Ribbon" involves a ready-bride "with my coat buttoned up to her throat," whose balcony vanishings insinuate a double-suicide, or at least murder. But it's "Came Blue" that rules this mopey potpourri, and yes, it's actually about an indigo orgasm. Fittingly, Callahan's backed by a lone organ as he sings-- and sweetly for a Smog song-- "There's a hunger in my hands/ I try to rub it into your body/ But I don't believe in this."
Despite how I'd craved a box set, I'll admit that this smattering of non-album tracks works well; these twelve languishing, solitary songs are more powerful in this group context than they were on their scattershot own. The record clearly shows that Smog has come quite some distance from his scritch-scratch tape-core beginnings, but furthermore, that Bill Callahan is The Stranger. He'd give you a knuckle instead of the finger. He'd report for battle with a bent bayonet. The cops outside his house don't know if he wants a standoff or surrender. His tombstone will read, "You Hardly Knew Me." His favorite subject: emptyhandedness, emptyhandedness, emptyhandedness.
