Rough Travel for a Rare Thing – Bill Callahan

It’s strange when an indie-rock luminary releases a vinyl only album. Curiouser still when it’s of a live show from three years prior.

At a stretch, it could be said that Callahan is framing the precious, fleeting experience essential of a live performance with the most nostalgic of all music formats. Just as a performance ebbs and burns into non-existence, vinyl, by its very nature, is not made to last; it deteriorates with every diamond stylus scrape.

Or, perhaps the nature of this release is a subtle move on Callahan’s part to encourage his future canonisation as some kind of alt-folk deity. Take the title for instance: Rough Travel For A Rare Thing. Is he so frail and rare to warrant that? Or is he poking fun at us? I wouldn’t put it past him.

This collection does feel as though it’s been engineered to appear as a timeless relic. The artwork would suggest as much, depicting his name as an anomalous growth ring in the cross-section of a tree-trunk. The selections are all old, too, Mostly from his back catalogue as Smog; with a token nod to his 2007 debut under his own name.

All of this equivocal, underhand irony would be wasted if the show—recorded at the Toff in Melbourne in November 2007—wasn’t as staunchly and simply perfect as it is.

The recording is very dry, but there’s a humble and inviting warmth to the music—a cohesion that’s aided, in part, by the sound of the vinyl. This ‘no frills’ feel is mirrored in the packaging: a simple tip-on sleeve concealing just the two records, all information—including a pic of BC clutching a les-paul and looking wistful—relegated to the labels.

The band is in fine form—just as loose as they need to be. Callahan is his rumbling, troubadouric self, his bard-like quality most apparent on tracks like ‘The Well’, in which his lonely ruminations meander confidently over the unravelling spindle of a folk-meets-krautrock backing. ‘In The Pines’ is another highlight.

For all of it’s self-conscious backward looking, the experience of listening to this is very immediate. If you close your eyes, it sounds like you’re in the room with the rest of the audience, BC towering over you like some kind of stoney-eyed scarecrow jesus. Sounds like it was a good gig.

published in the print edition of The Brag.

High Violet – The National

Three years on from Boxer and it's easy to forget that this band makes albums that grow on you slowly; albums that reveal a little more with each listen until eventually your dreams start to act out the lyrics, and you find subconscious snippets providing a sublime soundtrack to internal monologues as you toil through your day.

The disappointment some may have felt with the first single 'Bloodbuzz Ohio' will be dissolved after living with the album. This record is much more direct, and has greater momentum—it's more confident than Boxer was, but the moody incandescence of that album is no longer as thick. Not to worry.

As usual, Matt Berninger's lyrics are largely responsible for the lingering resonance of the beautifully realised songs and the album's success. They sink into your skin and end up tugging patiently at the fabric of your very being. He really does have a way with them.

"It's a terrible love, and I'm walkin' with spiders / It's a terrible love and I'm walkin' in / this quiet company..." he intimates over a gauzy guitar at the outset of 'Terrible Love', as the aural palette blossoms into cavernous exultance, a quilt of mellotron, cymbals, guitars; "It takes an ocean not to break."

Later, "I guess I've always been a delicate man / It takes me a day to remember a day / I didn't mean to let it get so far out of hand"

High Violet's song cycle starts with a tangle of anxiety and despair, alone in the negative space of a lost intimacy. It resolves triumphant.

In truth, it's almost as heady and hackle-raising as it's superior predecessor. But don't worry, it's a stunner.

published 19/04/10 in The Brag