A Week With Bill Callahan's "Woke On A Whaleheart": Day 3
20 August 2007
tell your friends...
Words by Joel Minor // Illustration by Chris Gregori
Truth be told, it’s been over ten years since Callahan reveled in the cutthroat politics of relationships. After the sparse and brooding The Doctor Came At Dawn, from 1996, he hardly touched the subject in the same way again. He officially closed the door on the off-kilter, lo-fi Smog phase with the epic Red Apple Falls the following year, creating not only a fuller, more polished sound, but a more optimistic mood and all-encompassing perspective, especially with the album’s closers “Inspirational” and “Finer Days.”
Even when the relationship doesn’t work out, as at the end of Knock Knock, he’s left only with love and fulfills the revelation of “Finer Days” by driving away by himself, into his own passage. Better to have loved and lost… So, for eight years and six albums, a second phase of Smog emerged, stronger to a woman’s manipulation and more sensitive to the tall grass, blood flow, saltwater, fence gate, cloudburst, sleeping horses and all sorts of other animals as inspiration.
I remember as a kid watching the maple tree seeds flutter down, probably around autumn. They had one-sided wings that caught on the wind and made them fly like helicopters to the ground. I don’t know if any of those trees were sycamore maples, but the relaxed, intertwining guitars of “Sycamore” remind me of such a sight, the interplay of air and seed, the wonders of botanical evolution expressed in the moment.
Callahan’s receptive, philosophical character returns here, ready to relay what he’s learned already, and eager to apply that to new experiences. He presents something that’s strong and tall against the sun and wind, that offers sugary sap for wine and honey and wood for furniture, veneer and violins, as a manner to live. He teaches the son of the father he learned from. He keeps his advice free and easy and confident.
And steady. “Sycamore” returns to the laid-back and loose feel of the album’s first song, but without the meandering. The music is tight, even as it is not nervous or aggressive. Same for “The Wheel,” an all-out country-gospel sounding song that revels in both stability and change. I get to this point in the album, and I’m ready to call out “halleluiah,” just waiting for the cue. Tricky Bill, though, he’s only going to call and respond to himself, even with chatter and laughter going on in the background.
“Sycamore” and “The Wheel” have a clock-like tightness that reminds me of the album Rain on Lens, but “Honeymoon Child” loosens it up a bit again, brings back some of the funky swagger of “Diamond Dancer.” This, “Honeymoon Child,” is the grandest song yet, incorporating pedal steel, organ, glockenspiel, violin, along with the usual guitars, bass and drums, to create a determined but untroubled anthem.
I have the sense that these three songs are the heart of the album. Not just because they are in the middle, but because of their expressions of balance. Conceived on the sun with heels in the sand, and raised in the wild space between two hearts, the honeymoon child is naked and innocent but surrounded by adoring expectation; a dove watched by ravens, with wings that can always turn.
As in the hypnotic “Permanent Smile” from Dongs of Sevotion, in “The Wheel” Callahan skirts the line between actually calling out to a deity and simply using the deity as a common manner of emphasis. The boy in “Sycamore” is named “Christiaan” on the lyric sheet, so the listener doesn’t sum up too quickly what he and his father represent. Even the symbolism of the sycamore fig tree is dualistic, the ancient Egyptians revering it a threshold between life and death.
I bring up “Permanent Smile” for another reason. It is Callahan’s last “Dong of Sevotion,” and ends with the line, “Oh God, I never, never ask why.” This is a key concept in understanding Callahan’s lyrics, from the very beginning up to and including Woke on a Whaleheart. He loves in the wild and fights in the gym; he finds stability in a turning wheel; he rests his soft self on a rusty scythe. But he doesn’t ask why.
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