Bill Callahan’s music has evolved over time, reaching various genres and styles along the way, to the point that even labelling him with broad terms such as a singer-songwriter or experimental artist somehow doesn’t quite cut it. Dream River might just be the best description of Callahan one could come up with, capturing his essence better than any amount of musical taxonomy ever could. Sure it’s different to other Bill Callahan and Smog records (it maybe leans toward the songwriter end of the spectrum more than anything so far), but there is something in the distilled storytelling, the frank and practical nature of his lyrics and characters, that is undeniably Callahan. Callahan at the top of his game.
I’ve been reading a collection of short stories by Richard Ford, Rock Springs, where the assorted characters do little more than merely exist in the little lives that they complicate for themselves. They are people who struggle to communicate, struggle to find peace in others, struggle to escape the melancholy of an individual’s ultimate lonliness, but refuse to give up and be reclusive or eternally pessimistic. These people keep going back for more, the vague flickering optimism of the constant motion of time and the possibility it brings (a new start or finding ‘The One’) too alluring to ever stop looking. Often these stories take place within recognisable situations, circumstances we can all remember or imagine happening to us. They aren’t fantastic or far-fetched. They aren’t fantasy. They are real problems and feelings woven into everyday actions, great drama and psychic pain in its true form, tiring and boring and in no way noble.
Dream River, despite the title, reminded me of this style of storytelling. Bill Callahan’s lyrics are packed with emotion and meaning but are not concerned with fantastic metaphors. There is a feeling of practicality, a sense of everyday functioning, characters living, existing, rather than narrating from some abstract position outside of their reality. These are characters rooted in their lives, men telling their story through actions rather than thoughts. It’s as if you are watching their lives unfold rather than listening to their recollections.
One of the key ingredients of this everyday cycle of melancholy and hope is the passage of time – it allows regret and loss but always enables a prospect of something different, a brighter future. One can bear painful or monotonous situations because time passes and things inevitably change. Dream River often references the natural world, the bigger picture, a reminder that outside of each discrete narrative there is always something infinitely bigger, some ancient certainty of change that can never be influenced by mere individuals. Take ‘Summer Painter’ for example:
’I painted names on boats for a summer…
…I painted these while beavers built dams all around me’’And come September, come fall
Holding a job was not believable behavior at all, so I split
But like a beaver is a dam builder, you never really quit
I made some dough and I socked it away
I always said for a rainy day’
Callahan uses nature as an example of his message. Throughout the album there is mention of trees and eagles and rivers, simple, knowable things which for whatever reason conjure a sense of something unknowable, something too expansive or old to properly define. Even the composition brings to mind some organic space, some untamed wilderness. It matches perfectly the whole atmosphere of Dream River, where people tell simple stories that conjure strange feelings, tales that hint at something mysterious and meaningful and important with nothing more than ordinary words. The result is something positive. While it admits that we cannot sit down and work out answers to the questions of life, it hints that simple things are not necessarily superficial, and in them we can find solace and happiness. As it says in ‘Winter Road’:
’Oh I have learned when things are beautiful
To just keep on, just keep on
Oh, when things are beautiful, just keep on’
Does it matter why things make us feel better? Bill Callahan tells us that it’s the fact they do is what’s important.
You can buy Dream River from Drag City or the Bill Callahan Bandcamp page.