Bill Callahan, London Union Chapel
Bill Callahan
August 20 2009
Bill Callahan’s second sold out show at the Union Chapel confirmed just what an impressive year it’s been for him, as an artist currently touring his thirteenth album and who only appears to be getting better with each release. This year’s Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle can be considered the third in a trio of albums where Callahan has begun to turn to lighter themes and arrangements in his songs. There was a lot of dark humour and pessimism in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s Smog records, but 2005’s A River Ain’t Too Much To Love and 2007’s Woke On A Whaleheart marked a turn towards natural themes and a more humanistic approach to relationships. Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle is perhaps the pinnacle of this gradual progression and, as ever, the Union Chapel made an ideal, stately setting for Callahan’s set, which was largely drawn from these three most recent albums.
Support came from Sophia Knapp, a member of Brooklyn collective Lights who released their debut album Rites earlier this year, appearing here as a solo artist. Knapp, a striking, slender figure with long blonde hair and a yellow dress, played a short set of delicate acoustic songs that set the mood prior to Callahan’s set. She has a strong, disarming voice that lent itself well to the exquisite acoustics of the chapel and if she seemed a little nervous at times, she won the audience round with her charm and reflective lyrics.
Bill Callahan took to the stage with a full backing band – a percussionist, extra guitarist, violinist and electric cellist – clearly intent on recreating his last few records’ fuller, more orchestral sounds. The string section was particularly impressive throughout, adding the kind of flourish that counter Callahan’s baritone so well on record. He opened with Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle’s lead off track ‘Jim Cain’ and followed this with a few more of the album’s highlights, ‘Rococo Zephyr’ and the impressive, tense ‘All Thoughts Are Prey To Some Beast’, clearly relaxing into the set.
Material from Woke On A Whaleheart got an airing too – ‘Diamond Dancer’ was given a fuller, whirling arrangement, as well as ‘Sycamore’, which was a request from the night before (Callahan joked that he’d got behind on his requests sometime around 1997). He also performed his cover of Kath Bloom’s ‘The Breeze’, which appeared on a tribute album Loving Takes This Course earlier this year. A mid the more expansive songs, it was a beautiful, delicate highlight, with its devastating opening line, ‘I’d like to touch you, but I don’t know how’.
Sophie Knapp came back for ‘The Wind And The Dove’ – her vocals worked well with Callahan’s, in the same way that Leonard Cohen used to counter his own baritone with a female accompaniment. With the latter part of the set came some song from A River Ain’t Too Much To Love; ‘Rock Bottom Riser’ made a welcome appearance, and ‘Say Valley Maker’, which is particularly sparse on record, was played in a more full-blooded manner: ‘Because there is no love/where there is no obstacle’, he sings halfway through, and the song became an unexpected highlight of the evening.
Callahan clearly warmed to the crowd as the night went on, playing requests for the moving ‘Let Me See The Colts’ and Knock Knock’s ‘Cold Blood Old Times’, which descended into an extended jam. Callahan remained underrated and underappreciated for far too long, but with his consistently strong output over the last decade and a half and a gradual turn to more fluid arrangements and gentler, though no less powerful or meaningful, lyrical themes, this slowly appears to be changing. “See you next time”, he said, as the set came to an end, finishing a night full of positives with one more.
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