A few years ago, around the time of the release of shepherd in a sheepskin vestsaid Bill Callahan in an interview with The Guardian: “I can’t die, life is too good.” It was 2019, and Callahan was releasing his first album of originals in six years. The silence was that of those who were busy living life, having children, that possible gesture of guaranteeing immortality. Since then, fatherhood has also entered the songs, like everything that was behind it. It’s that kind of naturalness that makes Callahan one of the greats. singer-songwriters alive. For him everything is life, everything matters to be narrated with a serious tone and ceremonial rhythm.
Since 2019 it has not stopped. Golden disc (2020), blind date partywith Bonnie Prince Billy (2021) and the last YTI⅃AƎЯ (2022) feed this idea that as long as Bill is present, the future is guaranteed. This reality, on the contrary, is the reason for a European tour that started this Friday night in Lisbon and that this Saturday passes through Braga, at the Theatro Circo.
The Tivoli Theater was full to receive him: him, Jim White on drums, Matt Kinsey on guitar (who has accompanied the American musician in the studio on recent albums) and saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi. A lineup that creates subtleties in Bill Callahan’s recent sound, White’s drumming creates spaces for everything to breathe and circulate with greater openness and Kinsey’s guitar often serves as a complement to Callahan’s to add rawer layers.
The sound of the hall did not help things take shape when needed, but the idea was felt, the structure of a musician who found the breeze beyond fifty years of age and manifests it with songs that amaze, but that no longer bewitch . There is a path to clarity that has been going on since apocalypse (2011) and that was reinforced with the return in 2019.
Callahan had not played in Lisbon since February 2014 (São Jorge), at that time with dream river highlighted in the alignment. Almost ten years have passed and, between songs, the musician plays with this, alluding to the seeds that he left planted on Avenida da Liberdade and that today are trees. He says that he did the same now, but the result will only be seen in twenty years. Joke from someone who had just started the concert with three songs from YTI⅃AƎЯthe first three of the album: “First Bird”, “Everyway” and “Bowevil”.
A presentation postcard of about an hour and a half that was mainly dedicated to the last album. There were still “Coyotes,” “Partition,” “Naked Souls,” and “Planets,” and stints on Callahan’s best album of the last five years, Golden disc (“Cowboy” and “The Mackenzies”), as well as “Small Plane” by dream river. This added to one of the best opening songs of the discography, “Drover” (by apocalypse).
Over the course of an hour and a half, the most that came out of Bill Callahan was calm. shepherd in a sheepskin vest He opened a new stage in the musician’s career, a chapter where routines enter without fear of becoming routines and where humor is increasingly declared and refined. you still got an attitude low key, letting his lyrics and his voice tell his story and not assuming himself as he really is: the best American singer-songwriter of the last decades. Part of the reason is also the fact that he doesn’t assume it, that he doesn’t build myths or stories about himself out of his songs. The verses and chords are enough. And that’s what it turned out to be at Tivoli.
Source: Observadora
