Drag City (Caroline)
2005
A River Ain't Too Much To Love
About This Album
Smog's Bill Callahan goes back to the root on A River Ain't Too Much to Love, his first full-length offering in two years. While it's true that his name is nearly synonymous with lo-fi, in recent years Callahan has experimented with different -- albeit simple -- production techniques such as on Dongs of Sevotion and Rain on Lens. Supper, issued in 2003, was more direct, both sonically and personally, and that tack is followed here, though the framework is even sparser. On this, his 12th album, Callahan journeyed south from Chicago to Willie Nelson's Pedernales recording studio in Spicewood, TX. Accompanied by the Dirty Three's Jim White once more holding down the drum chair, and Connie Lovatt on bass and backing vocals, Callahan evokes the ethos and poetry of spooky American folk and country music without ever actually playing them in his own tomes, using mainly waltzes to frame them. Americana this ain't. Callahan has the ability to write first-person narrative songs that cannily juxtapose an evocative physcal landscape that metaphorically refernces deep emotional states; he uses it to great effect here. The skeletal "Say Valley Maker" equates the loss of and longing for love with a river's ability to both fertilize and strip bare the floor of a valley.
Track List (try tracks 2,4,5 and 8)

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