Bill Callahan's latest record reveals a surprising contentment – it could be all those John Candy films he's been watching, or because he's been trying to avoid death lately. The theme of death has pervaded Callahan's work for many records, from his stint as Smog through to 2011's Apocalypse.
But on last year's Dream River, something lifted. While there are still references to dying, (and a severed hand) there is a sense of buoyancy and vitality – the very essence of love.
“Love is without question the only thing we have to give and receive, and therefore it animates us. I was thinking a lot about how the seasons are slipping out of gear and how closely they are tied to the poetry of our lives, and what does that mean if they are slipping, and not the solid change we have banked on?
“It’s a good lesson of the biblical sort, of having to keep your eye on love even if it is not dying when it is supposed to, or not being reborn, or at least realising that maybe that circle is no longer relevant. You fly a lot in dreams, and I often feel like I’m flying or gliding, or hovering in waking life – the way you take things in as separate, untouchable.”
Callahan's ability to carry over his dream state to his waking one has meant that he has become a singular voice in modern music. He references "looking out a window that isn't there" on The Sing, which accounts for his entire approach to creativity. He is the eagle on Ride My Arrow; and while he acknowledges that death is always on the way, it isn't his overriding preoccupation at present.
“I’ve tried to avoid death lately, in songs and in life, but it had to be brought up a couple times on this record. I like the idea of death being home, like when you die you yell, ‘Mama, I’m coming home!’ Though the idea of heaven doesn’t interest me, it has no weight or substance to me, but going home is a finality. It means it’s over. Who wants to dawdle in heaven for eternity watching old game shows? Maybe death is the only home. I’ve always felt uncomfortable with the cliche of searching for home. When you are a child, if you are lucky you are born into a home, and you are powerless to leave it. Then you grow up and leave – the home is inside you then, if you are lucky. It’s portable. You don’t need that same home that a child needs. You can have a family and make a home for them, but it is all life, not death. Then death is the only home.”
Often in poetry, sleep becomes a metaphor for death, and Callahan’s lifelong sleeplessness has affected his work, not least through some of the strange things he has experienced on night walks.
“The strangest thing for me to see is nothing, and I see a lot of that. No people, just lights on, or TV on and seemingly no one in the house, no sound. I guess people go to bed pretty early. I’m getting better at sleep. Touring messes up good schedules though. I try to look at it as the best of both worlds. I’m trying to get on a 10pm/6am schedule. This morning it was still dark, the moon was still up. I watched the sunrise hit the top of the telephone pole that looks like a crucifix. I thought briefly of a potential comedy sketch where Jesus was nailed to the telephone pole, sacrificing his life for our cell phone technology.”
The musicians he is touring with are known as the Princess Peach Band, or the “Peach Gang” – to assure his record label, Drag City, that he “would be backed by the finest”.
"With Apocalypse I was really trying for an ensemble, where each player has a voice and when that person plays, you know it's them as much as you recognise someone's speaking voice. It's always chaotic to make a record. If it was calm, it'd feel creepy to me. It's all sub- or un-conscious, or collective conscious, that is my feeling, that songs are already written, you just have to read them, write them down. They've been written by thousands of dead before you."
Callahan’s striving for something authentic has taken him (and, in turn, us) to some intriguing places; he is a natural foil to a world in thrall to the synthetic, and he talks of how we don’t understand the “deep effects” of these “new tools”. “Kids are killing themselves because of being bullied online. It’s real mental torture if you’re not equipped to handle it. It has turned everyone into paupers and royalty at the same time.”
His work is elemental, of the body as well as the mind, so it makes perfect sense that a dub reimagining of Dream River, entitled Have Fun With God, has just been released, since it harnesses a kind of raw feeling that people associate with Callahan.
“There was a weekly radio show in Maryland that I could pick up that played dub when I was a teenager. It seemed like something I needed to consult, a sacred text. I was listening to a dub record the other evening. There was a knock at the door. I ignored it because it’s usually a sales thing. They paused and knocked again but in time to the music. That wouldn’t have happened if I was playing Rush or something. That is how much the music speaks to the body – the stranger at the other side of the door couldn’t help knocking in time.”
Dream River is an open road, a deeply romantic statement, with Callahan suggesting that perhaps happiness is a choice. "I do believe we can choose how we see things. Even if there is a reality, there are ways of looking at it that are opposing. If you see life in that happy/sad way then it's a two-sided coin to you and so why not just flip it over whenever it's on the side you don't want?"
Bill Callahan plays the Olympia Theatre, Dublin, on Sunday Feb 2nd. Dream River and Have Fun With God are out now on Drag City
