Albums by this artist

Supper (2003)

Dongs Of Sevotion (2000)

Knock Knock (1999)

Smog

Supper

---

» PIERO SCARUFFI | STAFF WRITER

Smog Supper Drag City, 2003 RiYL: Cat Power, Leonard Cohen, Will Oldham

On the heels of 2001's cold, claustrophobic Rain On Lens, Supper is an odd, almost schizophrenic collection that ranges from the waltzing country elegy "Feather by Feather" to the Lou Reed-ish boogie "Butterflies Drowned in Wine" (with tribal drums, courtesy of Jim White). By the third song, the sloppy, dirty, slow-burning Stones-like blues of "Morality," mainman Bill Callahan has thrown the listener into his moral universe with little or no help from the lyrics (which are certainly not his best). It is the music alone that sets the tone, the pace and the mood.

The sequencing enhances this aspect of the album, as the songs get more and more solemn and rarefied, and the lyrics abandon Smog's companion to delve into metaphysical puzzles. "Ambition" spins its noir/lounge tale over tense, suspenseful guitar chords. "Vessel In Vain" returns to an old-fashioned pace, echoing Leonard Cohen in his prime, a feat doubled when the seven-minute "Truth Serum" brings back perfumes of Van Morrison's Astral Weeks. "Driving" is chanted like a Tibetan prayer over loose jamming.

Overall, it sounds like Callahan has entered a new phase of his career and of his life. The voice of the closing "A Guiding Light," the philosophical apex of this journey (in which Callahan finds his "guiding light" in the statement he just made of "trying to prove wrong/ all the statements I made"), is the voice of a man who stands calmly on the threshold of his house, looking outside, and sees the same old place with new eyes.

Smog has achieved an intriguing synthesis of the languages coined over the decades by legions of singer/songwriters. In doing so, Callahan's art has lost quite a bit of what made it so personal (emotional depth), but it has gained immensely in its universal appeal as a sound and a voice of its times.

PIERO SCARUFFI | Piero Scaruffi runs the exhaustive music database Scaruffi.com. A native of Italy, he has also been praised for his work on the General Theory of Relativity, formal theories of the mind, and artificial intelligence. And no, we aren't making that up.