(out of 5)
For his second post-Smog record, Bill Callahan returns to the dark and moody style of his records under that moniker. In fact, the oddly named Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle sounds more like Smog than much of his recent output. These nine brooding songs revolve around Callahan’s deep voice and acoustic guitar while string arrangements, drums, and other instruments are built around them to provide a cocoon from which Callahan reflects on himself, lost love, and God.
The key to this album, and probably all of Callahan’s work, is his voice. His deep baritone has about as much emotional depth as it does range–that’s to say not very much. At first, this cavalier delivery can be a bit off-putting, but after a while it can become the best thing about the record. It seems as if everything Callahan is saying is some dry, dark joke. And so, during certain serious moments you don’t know whether you should laugh or cry. It adds a certain mystery and intrigue to the songs.
The record peaks early with its first two tracks. “Jim Cain,” the opener, is a simple folksy song complete with plucked guitar strings and pastoral lyrics that ask how far trees bend in the wind. “I used to be darker, then I got lighter, then I got darker again” is the song’s most memorable lyric and many have taken it as a description of Callahan’s twenty-year career, which isn’t a stretch. However, the album’s tone is set with the opening lyric: “I started out in search of ordinary things.” The song is full of riddles and imagery, but it’s also the perfect introduction to the record. Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle is a search for ordinary things, love, God, and meaning. These things aren’t ordinary in the sense that they’re mundane, rather, they are ordinary in the sense that these are the things for which all people search.
“Eid Ma Clack Shaw” is a rare song that is as funny as it is profound. Its quick, clipped piano chords push it along as Callahan revolves around a simple request,”How? How? Show me the way, show me the way, show me the way, to shake a memory.” A fair question which everyone probably asks at one time or another. “I dreamed it was a dream that you were gone,” Callahn continues in a voice that’s so stripped of emotion, it sounds eerily believable. The song ends with its narrator returning to sleep in which he dreams the perfect song which contains all the answers he’s been searching for. He rises to jot down the song in the middle of the night so as not to forget it, only to discover the next morning a paper full of jibberish. It’s a profound statement about the search which Callahan began in “Jim Cain,” and so before we even hear the rest of the album, we know his search, which concludes with “Faith/Void,” will end without satisfaction.
However, the rest of the album’s journey to that conclusion isn’t bad, it just never quite reaches the heights of the first two numbers. The only misstep here may be that closer “Faith/Void.” In it, Callahan declares that “It’s time to put God away” and that he has already done that. The mistake is that the song nearly reaches the ten-minute mark without justifying why it ought to be that long. It still a fascinating song as Callahan’s delivery sounds so sure, so confident, but the song’s title is really anything but.
Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle is a fine album that has both a unshakable heaviness and clever lightness to it simultaneously, like some darkly funny joke. And it’s a joke worth hearing and sharing with others.
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“Jim Cain”
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Bill Callahan
Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle
Drag City, 2009
