Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle

"I used to be darker/ Then I got lighter/ Then I got dark again." With these three simple lines from "Jim Cain", the opening track of his lovelorn new album, the always-succinct Bill Callahan sums up his tempestuous musical trajectory. For those of you keeping score at home, "darker" seems to refer to most of his output as Smog, when his songwriting often succumbed to the weary dread his dead-planet of a voice e xudes like gravity. The lightening occurred over the course of A River Ain't Too Much to Love, his final record as Smog, and Woke on a Whaleheart, his first post-Smog effort. On these records, romantic gratitude gradually replaced romantic pessimism. Bill Callahan was happy; at peace. But it wasn't to last. The slumbering beast of love, "the lion walking down city streets," awoke, and it was pissed. He got dark again. 

Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle is Bill Callahan’s second LP since his decision to ditch his well-known Smog moniker and record under his given name. This switch had caused much debate, if not anxiety, among the Drag City faithful. His 2005 A River Ain’t Too Much To Love was his most seminal work to date, an existential hand-wrenching that (in hindsight) served as a proper score to send Mr. Smog o ff to greener pastures. Appreciative fans of Bill Callahan fretted over the new incarnation of the artist and hoped that the name-change would bring him much inspiration, albeit not too much to abandon his tried-and-true sublime glum.