Supper time
That old conundrum: why do records one has been looking forward to for ages always disappoint on first listen? Since that happened with Smog’s new one Supper I’ve been tapping my feet, nodding my head and singing along. There isn’t a filler track on it. The link goes to Amazon US as it have samples.
Here’s Pitchfork’s review. Certainly, it’s accessible, as Matt LeMay says, but this is exactly what makes Bill Callahan’s “unique, often disturbing touch” unique and disturbing. A beautiful Sunday morning song like Truth Serum does not need “off-kilter instrumentation and � understated, absurd and darkly comic wordplay� to emphasise its distance from the norm. But then again, I love “female vocals and clich�d slide guitar”. The comparison LeMay makes to Will Oldham’s Master and Everyone occurred to me also. Listening to that again, I was struck by how artificial Smog sounds in comparison to the painfully otherworldly nature of Oldham’s music. His songs are truly disturbing. More slide guitars then Bonnie Billy? Let’s hope so.
Other Splinters posts of interest:
- Mozart, Vicious and McCarthy
- (Smog) last night
- Shut up and hold still: Smog live
- Losing the brackets
- Getting mouldy
