Bill Callahan - My Days Of 58 2LP

For an artist that has spent the better part of three decades obfuscating and blurring the lines between the personal and the persona, a record called My Days of 58 seems to be pretty major break in Bill Callahan’s extensive catalogue.

Gone are songs about guarding prisoners, breaking horses, and administering marriage rites, instead, we’re given a body of songs about raising kids, grappling with parental legacies, writing songs, taking antidepressants, and hitting the road. Sure, biographical content has crept further and further into his work since leaving behind the Smog moniker, however this is the most revealing pulling aside of the curtain yet, so much so that it’s almost confrontingly honest at points.

Yet this is after all, still a Bill Callahan record. Songs dip into the surreal (Lou Reed guarding the gates of heaven), self-referential song structure gags, and perhaps the catchiest line in his entire catalogue (I light myself a little fuego and watch the waves as they flow / Lake Winnebago). In a bunch of interviews he’s made reference to wanting this record to sound like a ‘living room album.’ In one sense, it’s a warm sounding LP featuring his regular live backing band with a foregrounding of Dustin Laurenzi’s horn arrangements and some of Matt Kinsey’s most soft-rock sounding guitar lines as a bed for the lyrics (Jim White’s drumming seems to settle into the background of the mix moreso here than other LPs).

Domestic in scope for a domestic listening experience, and a return to studio form! - Mitch