“So we gave them something to show them who WE were—Dale Coopers with our black coffees.” This is how Bill Callahan describes this December 10, 2001, Peel session. While I write this, I see the light sneaking in the horizon of Moss Side. It’s early, cold, and my coffee is not black because I always need some kind of milk with it. I stop to look at the cover of the EP: I’ve set it as my laptop’s wallpaper to remind me to finish this article. Callahan is sitting in a reclinable chair, he’s holding a transparent holy grail whilst a dog rests his paws on Callahan’s knees. The letters of the title blend with the colours of the dog and the armchair; the EP has this same dynamic: the songs blend with each other, I can even imagine the songs blending with the studio room, as some kind of colour out of the UK getting glued to the walls of the studio in Maida Vale.
I’m curious about the order of the songs: the EP starts with a cover and ends with a cover. What we have in the middle is a sandwich of Smog tracks.
Callahan regarding this recording of Dirty pants: “probably better than the LP version.” There’s no certainty in Callahan’s reflection, just a Dale Cooper proudness.
I think of Callahan´s facial expressions and his little dances live, especially after seeing him live a couple of weeks ago in Manchester. I like to imagine that those same movements were still present whilst recording this session, 23 years ago, in a picture someone may have taken quickly and now rests in one of the archives of Maida Vale. The record, as a long shot, is stable and seems effortless.
If I think of an element I can define as Lynchian in this EP, it would be the sound of Jessica Billey´s violin that it’s like the wheezing of a dying lung. Billey, on an Instagram post, recalls the tour as raw and cathartic, and a “major turning point in our world and my personal life.” The recording was one of the last stops of the Rain on Lens tour.
Jim White also visited Manchester some weeks ago touring with Callahan and is touring next January 2025 with the Hard Quartet. In Jesus, his drumming, as gentle protest, fades in and out, like an echo of ripples in a frozen lake. My naïveté and faith in the internet wanted to think that I would be able to find more information about Mike Saenz, I couldn´t find any more to write about him.
I sent this EP to a friend and she told me that she thinks that a lot of Bill Callahan songs are about childhood. I was not sure about what she meant. The first song of the EP was beautiful child, a tacit refence to childhood, whereas Dirty Pants and Cold Discovery not so much whilst Jesus is universal. I then checked our history of messages and found that the first song I sent her was Cold Blooded Old Times, from Knock, knock. In the same exchange of messages, she told me that after listening to the LP, how for her the album was a childhood album. The album is about trauma, being able to be alone, to try to forgive and to learn to use the freedom that we have. Is the thread too thin to think this? Perhaps, but the interpretation is plausible to her, from our WhatsApp messages, and in extension, to me.
Bill Callahan´s Smog: The Holy Grail: Bill Callahan’s “Smog” Dec. 10, 2001 Peel Session – Out 22 November 2024 (Drag City Records)
